Eliminate syllabic separation in txt files

Question

First, I would like to explain that since this is my first post, I did a lot of research before publishing my question, as is suggested in the Q&A of this excellent platform. The second point I make is that I am not a python expert. In fact, I'm just an enthusiast for this great programming language. Well, I'm trying to fix a relatively large txt file. The point of the question is the correction of the syllabic separations that exist in the referred file, and in great quantity. In my research, I found some articles similar to my question, which even helped me a lot to think in different perspectives. Among these articles, I can highlight some such as:

How to delete empty lines

Using grep:

grep -v '^$' test1.txt > test2.txt

How to delete all blank lines

Using fileinput:

import fileinput for line in fileinput.FileInput("file",inplace=1): if line.rstrip(): print line

But, unfortunately my question is more specific. In my txt files there are many syllabic separations. Thank goodness, they are all standardized this way:

example_of_w'- '

ord

My goal would be, through some python script, all file separations to be corrected / eliminated, as an example below:

Before script:

example_of_w'- '

ord

After script:

example_of_word

Note that the syllabic separation is patterned with - and 'space'. Please excuse me if I was not able to be clear in my question, and with my language mistakes. I thank you all for any help. An excellent day for everyone!

Answer 1

I don´t know the complete scope of your problem, but as of now, for the little information you provide. You could do:

a = "example_of_w- ord has to be interest- ing"

# replace of occurrences of first argument with the second argument
print(a.replace("- ", "")) 

Outputs:

example_of_word has to be interesting

EDIT:

If you want to do this to all lines on a txt file you can do this:

This is the content of sy.txt:

example_of_w- ord has to be interest- ing. refuge or dis- charge area to exit the event grounds. refuge or dis- charge area to exit the event grounds. example_of_w- ord has to be interest- ing. wa- ter in the riv- er is wonder- ful

This is the script on the same folder than sy.txt:

output = ""
replaceParameter = "- "
with open("sy.txt") as f:
    for line in f:
        output += line.replace(replaceParameter, "")

print(output)

And the output would be:

example_of_word has to be interesting. refuge or discharge area to exit the event grounds. refuge or discharge area to exit the event grounds. example_of_word has to be interesting. water in the river is wonderful

As you can see, I opened a file and then I loop through all the lines in it and replace the replaceParameter = "- " for an empty string.

EDIT 2:

This would work for cases on the end of the line:

output = ""
replaceParameter = "- "

with open("sy.txt") as f:
    for line in f:
        output += line

output = output.replace("\n- ", "")
output = output.replace("-\n ", "")
output = output.replace("- \n", "")
output = output.replace(replaceParameter , "")

print(output)

Trying it out for this input:

example_of_w- ord has to be interest- ing. refuge or dis- charge area to exit the event grounds.
refuge or dis- charge area to exit the event grounds. example_of_w- ord has to be interest- ing.
wa- ter in the riv- er is wonder- ful. refuge or dis- charge area to exit the event grounds ref- 
uge or dis- charge area to exit the event grounds. refuge or dis- charge area to exit the linebr
- eaks

And the output:

example_of_word has to be interesting. refuge or discharge area to exit the event grounds. refuge or discharge area to exit the event grounds. example_of_word has to be interesting. water in the river is wonderful. refuge or discharge area to exit the event grounds refuge or discharge area to exit the event grounds. refuge or discharge area to exit the linebreaks