Remove all slashes and backsleshes

Question

I have a string:

res = 'qwer!@ 234234 4234gdf36/\////// // \ \\\$%^$% dsfg'

and I want to remove ALL slashes and backslashes. I tried this:

import string
import re

symbolsToRemove = string.punctuation
res = 'qwer!@ 234234 4234gdf36/\////// // \ \\\$%^$% dsfg'
res = re.sub(r'['+symbolsToRemove+']', ' ', res)
print(res)

But get the next result:

qwer 234234 4234gdf36 \ \ \ dsfg

What am I doing wrong?

Can you not just do `res.replace ("\\", "").replace ("/", "")` — Minion Jim, Feb 15 '18 at 12:15
The resulting regex is `[!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~]` and the ``\`` escaspes a `]` in it. You should escape the symbols to match literal chars. Or at least escape the `-`, `]`, `^` and ``\``. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Feb 15 '18 at 12:18
Replace works just fine. Don't bother with regular expressions. — Mathieu, Feb 15 '18 at 12:19
@Mathieu i think we should encourage the use of regex, as they are fast and efficient — user5722540, Feb 15 '18 at 12:20
also related [escaping regex string in python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/280435/escaping-regex-string-in-python) : `'[' + re.escape(symbolsToRemove) + ']'` — Nahuel Fouilleul, Feb 15 '18 at 12:24

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 15 '18 at 12:17

2

import string
import re
symbolsToRemove = string.punctuation
res = 'qwer!@ 234234 4234gdf36/\////// // \ \\\$%^$% dsfg'
res = re.sub(r'[\\]*[\/]*','', res)
print(res)

answered Feb 15 '18 at 12:17

user5722540

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anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-15T12:27:09.903

1

This should work with re.escape:

>>> print re.sub(r'['+re.escape(symbolsToRemove)+']+', ' ', res)
qwer  234234 4234gdf36        dsfg

edited Feb 15 '18 at 12:27

answered Feb 15 '18 at 12:17

anubhava

761,203
64
569
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Yes, it does: `>>> string.punctuation` `'!"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~'` – Thierry Lathuille Feb 15 '18 at 12:22
Sorry for the goof up. Yes OP just needs to do `re.esacpe` – anubhava Feb 15 '18 at 12:26
I didn't get it - you previous answer did it well :) What's the matter to change it? – Mikhail_Sam Feb 15 '18 at 12:28
@Mikhail_Sam: Previous answer also worked because it had separate \\ but I had wrong explanation. This one will also work because `re.escape(symbolsToRemove)` will escape each and every special character in `symbolsToRemove` string where \ is already present. – anubhava Feb 15 '18 at 12:30

Remove all slashes and backsleshes

2 Answers2