CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.x
shunmuga prakash
shunmuga prakash

Reputation: 91

Print only alphabetics in a string using Regular Expression

Goal : i want only alphabets to be printed in a string

#Input 
#======
string = '   529Wind3@.     '

#Neededoutput
#============
'Wind'

I tried coding for this using the below code

import re
string=re.sub('[^a-z]+[^A-Z]',' ',string)
print(string)

The output i'm getting is 

ind

But this code only applies for lowercase Can you please tell me how to write code for both upper and lowercase

Upvotes: 1

Views: 71

Answers (5)

Shivam Mishra
Shivam Mishra

Reputation: 1439

You need to write [^a-zA-Z] instead of [^a-z]+[^A-Z]. The + operator is for detecting repetitive characters and not to combine multiple conditions.

Try the below code for your requirement: 

import re
string=re.sub('[^a-zA-Z]',' ',string)
print(string)

Upvotes: 1

BoarGules
BoarGules

Reputation: 16952

I agree with @U8-Forward's point but I think you may also want to know why your regular expression isn't working. This

[^a-z]+[^A-Z]

doesn't do what you want because W matches [^a-z]+ and so gets removed.

Put all of the characters you don't want in a single character class:

[^a-zA-Z]+

Upvotes: 2

U13-Forward
U13-Forward

Reputation: 71580

Try using a list comprehension to check if each character is in string.ascii_letters or not, if it is, it will be stored:

import string
String = '   529Wind3@.     '
print(''.join([i for i in String if i in string.ascii_letters]))

Output:

Wind

Upvotes: 1

Sideshow Bob
Sideshow Bob

Reputation: 4716

print re.sub('[^a-zA-Z]','',string)

Upvotes: 1

user8060120
user8060120

Reputation:

you can use re.findall

import re
String = '   529Wind3@.     '
string = re.findall('[a-zA-Z]+', String)
print(''.join(string))

Upvotes: 1

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