How to remove specific symbols from a text using python?

Question

I have a string like this:

string = 'This is my text of 2013-02-11, & it contained characters like this! (Exceptional)'

These are the symbols I want to remove from my String.

!, @, #, %, ^, &, *, (, ), _, +, =, `, /

What I have tried is:

listofsymbols = ['!', '@', '#', '%', '^', '&', '*', '(', ')', '_', '+', '=', '`', '/']
exceptionals = set(chr(e) for e in listofsymbols)
string.translate(None,exceptionals)

The error is:

an integer is required

Please help me doing this!

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3939361/remove-specific-characters-from-a-string-in-python this may be helpfull!! — JK Patel, Mar 08 '13 at 06:32

Volatility · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-08T06:33:13.453

7

Try this

>>> my_str = 'This is my text of 2013-02-11, & it contained characters like this! (Exceptional)'
>>> my_str.translate(None, '!@#%^&*()_+=`/')
This is my text of 2013-02-11,  it contained characters like this Exceptional

Also, please refrain from naming variables that are already built-in names or part of the standard library.

edited Mar 08 '13 at 06:33

answered Mar 08 '13 at 06:28

Volatility

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '13 at 06:27

3

How about this? I've also renamed string to s to avoid it getting mixed up with the built-in module string.

>>> s = 'This is my text of 2013-02-11, & it contained characters like this! (Exceptional)'
>>> listofsymbols = ['!', '@', '#', '%', '^', '&', '*', '(', ')', '_', '+', '=', '`', '/']
>>> print ''.join([i for i in s if i not in listofsymbols])
This is my text of 2013-02-11,  it contained characters like this Exceptional

answered Mar 08 '13 at 06:27

TerryA

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I would have suggested something similar; two minor points: the name "listofsymbols" could be sharpened to "filtersymbols" and the list notation is a bit clumsy, since a simple string also works. – guidot Mar 08 '13 at 08:10
@guidot. One, names do not matter (with the exceptions of getting mixed up with built-in functions). And strings are immutable, so how would you do your second suggestion? – TerryA Mar 08 '13 at 08:17
filtersymbols IS immutable (the string notation also prevents errors like '@ ' instead of '@') since only used for look-up; and while names don't matter for compilers they do for humans. – guidot Mar 08 '13 at 08:36

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 08 '13 at 08:45

0

Another proposal, easily expandable to more complex filter criteria or other input data type:

from itertools import ifilter

def isValid(c): return c not in "!@#%^&*()_+=`/"

print "".join(ifilter(isValid, my_string))

answered Mar 08 '13 at 08:45

guidot

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How to remove specific symbols from a text using python?

3 Answers3