Python - Replace multiple character at once with .replace command

Question

Is there any way to replace multiple different characters to another with a single .replace command?

Currently, I'm doing it once per line or through a loop:

    UserName = input("Enter in Username:")
    UserName = UserName.replace("/", "_")
    UserName = UserName.replace("?", "_")
    UserName = UserName.replace("|", "_")
    UserName = UserName.replace(":", "_")
    print(UserName)

    #Here's the second way- through a loop.
    Word = input("Enter in Example Word: ")
    ReplaceCharsList = list(input("Enter in replaced characters:"))

    for i in range(len(ReplaceCharsList)):
        Word = Word.replace(ReplaceCharsList[i],"X")
    print(Word)

Is there a better way to do this?

FYI, replace can be chained: `UserName = UserName.replace("/", "_").replace("?", "_").replace("|", "_").replace(":", "_")` — hostingutilities.com, Nov 03 '18 at 03:10

slider · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-02T23:57:18.793

You can use re.sub with a regex that contains all the characters you want to replace:

import re

username = 'goku/?db:z|?'
print(re.sub(r'[/?|:]', '_', username))
# goku__db_z__

For the case where your user enters the characters to repalce, you can build your regex as a string:

user_chars = 'abdf.#' # what you get from "input"
regex = r'[' + re.escape(user_chars) + ']'

word = 'baking.toffzz##'
print(re.sub(regex, 'X', word))
# XXkingXtoXXzzXX

Python - Replace multiple character at once with .replace command

1 Answers1