Replace special characters in a list python

Question

I would like to replace ':',' ', '-', '(', and ')' with an underscore for the items in this list:

columns = ['Region', 'Cat', 'Bld', 'Fbld', 'Ht(m)', 'H:W', 'Fperv', 'Froof', 'wall type', 'roof type', 'road-type', 'Tmn', 'Tmx', 'Notes']

So that:

columns = ['Region', 'Cat', 'Bld', 'Fbld', 'Ht_m', 'H_W', 'Fperv', 'Froof', 'wall_type', 'roof_type', 'road_type', 'Tmn', 'Tmx', 'Notes']

The goal is to replace all special characters and space so that it can be read into an sql table. Thanks for any help.

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 07 '17 at 16:26

Since you provided a list of the special characters, you could:

create a translation table using dict comprehension
apply the translation to the elements of your list

code:

orig_list = ['Region', 'Cat', 'Bld', 'Fbld', 'Ht(m)', 'H:W', 'Fperv', 'Froof', 'wall type', 'roof type', 'road-type', 'Tmn', 'Tmx', 'Notes']

d = {ord(x):"_" for x in ":-() "}
new_list = [x.translate(d) for x in orig_list]

print(new_list)

result:

['Region', 'Cat', 'Bld', 'Fbld', 'Ht_m_', 'H_W', 'Fperv', 'Froof', 'wall type', 'roof type', 'road_type', 'Tmn', 'Tmx', 'Notes']

The classic regex solution as an alternative:

import re
new_list = [re.sub("[:\-() ]","_",x) for x in orig_list]

Replace special characters in a list python

1 Answers1