How to remove exclamation marks from a sentence except the last one

Question

Hi I guess that the title says it all.

For example if I have a string like: "The food! is great!!!"

I want python to change it to: "The food is great!"

Thank you all in advance. :)

Have you tried anything yourself yet? Where did you get stuck? — Martijn Pieters, Jan 25 '17 at 17:27
@depperm No it does not always end in ! and the number of ! is random. — melindaou, Jan 25 '17 at 17:30

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 25 '17 at 17:29

4

You can use a regex with lookahead:

import re

re.sub(r'!+(?=.*\!)','',text)

The regex

!+(?=.*\!)

matches any sequences of exclamation marks given the lookahead (?=.*\!) sees an exclamation mark. All these exclamation marks are substituted by the empty string.

$ python2
Python 2.7.12 (default, Nov 19 2016, 06:48:10) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import re
>>> text="The food! is great!!!"
>>> re.sub(r'!+(?=.*\!)','',text)
'The food is great!'

answered Jan 25 '17 at 17:29

Willem Van Onsem

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i think this is a bit too advanced for the OP and anyone who would lookup such a thing – Ma0 Jan 25 '17 at 17:32
advanced yes, but it is a valid solution – depperm Jan 25 '17 at 17:34
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@Ev.Kounis: well personally I think regexes are very elegant tools because you *specify* what you want and do not have to worry (much) about how it works behind the curtains. Furthermore that's in my opinion not a reason for a dv: it is functionally correct and the answer explains what is happening. – Willem Van Onsem Jan 25 '17 at 17:34
Furthermore if later the OP changes their mind and wants to tweak the specifications a bit, he/she should probably not return to this site for another question. Regexes are a common tool and there is plenty of documentation on it. – Willem Van Onsem Jan 25 '17 at 17:37
I did not downvote and i find the answer a very fine one. Putting my self in OP's shoes though, I probably wouldn't even read it in fear of its complexity. – Ma0 Jan 25 '17 at 17:38

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

2

strs="The food! is great!!!"
count=strs.count("!")-1
strs = strs.replace('!','',count)
print strs

https://stackoverflow.com/a/16268024/6626530

output

The food is great!

edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Community

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answered Jan 25 '17 at 17:31

Shijo

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Why do you do the last replacement? – Willem Van Onsem Jan 25 '17 at 17:32
@Willem Van Onsem you are right , last replacement is not required, updated it – Shijo Jan 25 '17 at 17:35
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@Shijo you are also removing the exclamation mark in the middle. – Ma0 Jan 25 '17 at 17:39
@Ev.Kounis: that is the intended behavior as you can see in the example the OP gave. – Willem Van Onsem Jan 25 '17 at 17:40
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@ Steven Rumbalski ,Yes, the question is "How to remove exclamation marks from a sentence except the last one", so it keeps the last one – Shijo Jan 25 '17 at 18:06

techkris · Answer 3 · 2017-01-25T17:31:57.840

-2

replace all '!' in the string with ''. then string = string + '!'

string.replace('!','')
string = string + '!'

edited Jan 25 '17 at 17:31

answered Jan 25 '17 at 17:29

techkris

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Works only if his string ends with ! – Jacques de Hooge Jan 25 '17 at 17:29
@JacquesdeHooge What do you mean? This is actually a smart solution – Ma0 Jan 25 '17 at 17:30
If his string doesn't end with !, then a ! is appended that shouldn't be there. How is that smart? Also the only ! may be in the middle... – Jacques de Hooge Jan 25 '17 at 17:32
@JacquesdeHooge this is a detail that can be taken care of with an `if`-statement though. The idea is smart – Ma0 Jan 25 '17 at 17:32
@JacquesdeHooge The exclamation mark in the middle is indeed a problem. Didn't see that. You are right. – Ma0 Jan 25 '17 at 17:36
@JacquesdeHooge: `s = s.replace('!', '') + ('!' if s.endswith('!') else '')` This assumes the text contains only once sentence. Works fine for `'Who said!!!! that?'` and `'No Way!!!!!'`. – Steven Rumbalski Jan 25 '17 at 17:56
Does that work for 'Who said!!!! that?'? Doesn't give you 'Who said that?'? – Jacques de Hooge Jan 25 '17 at 18:03

How to remove exclamation marks from a sentence except the last one

3 Answers3