Using replace with an array of strings

Question

I want to do the following:

thing = "hello world"
A = ["e","l"]
B = ["l","e"]
newthing = thing.replace(A,B)
print(newthing)

The output then should be hleeo wored, but it seems like I am not allowed to use replace with an array as input. Is there a way to still do it like this?

With a dictionary? `dict(zip(A, B))` and then do the replacement — roganjosh, Mar 08 '20 at 22:24
Does this answer your question? [How to replace multiple substrings of a string?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6116978/how-to-replace-multiple-substrings-of-a-string) — mlg556, Mar 08 '20 at 22:29

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 09 '20 at 07:53

1

This will work:

newthing = thing
for a,b in zip(A, B):
    newthing = newthing.replace(a, b)

edited Mar 09 '20 at 07:53

Tomerikoo

18,379
16
47
61

answered Mar 08 '20 at 22:27

Gianluca

536
4
7

This is a nice and clean approach, but sadly will not give the desired output (because of the cyclic `e -> l`, `l -> e`) – Tomerikoo Mar 08 '20 at 22:33
This is what I thought too, but it doesn't aim for his desired output which is "hleeo wored" – 010011100101 Mar 08 '20 at 22:33
As was pointed out, this solution has a problem that it also replaces the strings which have already been replaced, but this is not a problem for my actual code so I will accept the answer. – Ruben Lier Mar 08 '20 at 22:50

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '20 at 22:42

0

Here's what I came up with.

thing = "hello world"
A = ["e","l"]
B = ["l","e"]

def replace_test(text, a, b):
    _thing = ''
    for s in text:
        if s in a:
            for i, val in enumerate(a):
                if s == val:
                    s = b[i]
                    break
        _thing += s
    return _thing

newthing = replace_test(thing, A, B) 
print(newthing)

#>> hleeo wored

answered Mar 08 '20 at 22:42

010011100101

1,630
1
10
20

1

hm ... but this works only with 1-letter replacements, isn't it? – Gwang-Jin Kim Mar 08 '20 at 22:46
It also might be better to transform `a` and `b` to a mapping by `dict(zip(a, b))` so you can save on that search-&-replace to a mere `_thing += mapping.get(s, s)` – Tomerikoo Mar 09 '20 at 07:49

Using replace with an array of strings

2 Answers2