how to match `“` with regex in python?

Question

There is a symbol in tweets : “

“@BrownieSWP: High is s***????” you like 12 tf

The symbol is not ". I write this regex to match it:

re.sub('(“|”)', '"', tweet)

This regex (“|”) worked in sublime text. But it didn't work in python.

Please try to refrain from using expletives even in your examples. — James Mertz, Aug 28 '14 at 14:56
Seems to work in python too http://regex101.com/r/tJ3rD4/1. Have you tried what Code Generator suggests? — Federico Piazza, Aug 28 '14 at 14:58
The parentheses in your regex are superfluous. When matching a single character, it is often considered more elegant to use a character class, although it's actually one character more in this case. — tripleee, Aug 28 '14 at 16:08
@KronoS Sorry, It's example from tweets. I will mind it next time. — stamaimer, Aug 29 '14 at 00:47

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

3

The character you have copy/pasted is a U+201C "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK". In the re.sub() you also have the corresponding right quotation mark U+201D. Perhaps the environment in which you tried to paste it wasn't set up to handle Unicode correctly, and converted it to some other encoding. (See also How do I see the current encoding of a file in Sublime Text 2?)

You can always use Python's escape codes to unambiguously and ASCII-compatibly refer to a Unicode character; re.sub(u'[\u201c\u201d]', '', tweet)

edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

Community

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answered Aug 28 '14 at 15:58

tripleee

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This is the method I prefer if there's ever a situation where Unicode character support in editors may be questioned. From annoying previous experience, it only took one misconfigured editor to screw up an entire source file. – Rejected Aug 28 '14 at 16:08

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 28 '14 at 14:59

1

It works for me,

>>> s = r"“@BrownieSWP: High is s***????” you like 12 tf"
>>> m = re.sub(r'[”“]', r'', s)
>>> m
'@BrownieSWP: High is s***???? you like 12 tf'

edited Aug 28 '14 at 14:59

Luke Willis

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answered Aug 28 '14 at 14:58

Avinash Raj

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how to match `“` with regex in python?

2 Answers2