Finding Special Characters in a String

[ATXpython]

Hello,

Ive got a script that builds a list based on data from a spreadsheet.
Each item added to the list is a string, some of which contain special characters like $, *, @, etc.

What Id like to do is remove the special characters from each item in the list.
So if the spreadsheet has 'blah $blah' Id want just 'blah blah'.

I was thinking it may be best to create a list of the characters I want to search for, then loop over each character of each list item.

If anyone could help with some pseudo code, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Larz60+]

Hello,

Try this:

import re

def remove_special_characters(s=None):
    if s:
        return re.sub(r'[^a-zA-Z\d\s]', '', s)
    return None

if __name__ == '__main__':
    s = remove_special_characters('Is there any $*@#Rat^$#~ in the strawberry shortcake?')
    print(s)

results

Is there any Rat in the strawberry shortcake

Larz60+

[ichabod801]

I would use the translate method of the strings. It allows for the deletion of multiple characters in one call, along with other modifications. You need a translation table, using maketrans. In Python 3.x this is a method of the string object as well, but in Python 2.x it's part of the string module.

[snippsat]

I was thinking it may be best to create a list of the characters I want to search for, then loop over each character of each list item.

Yes you can do it one go like this.

>>> s = 'bl"a@h $bl*ah'
>>> ''.join(c for c in s if c not in '$@"*')
'blah blah'

[ATXpython]

Thank you all so much!!
Very helpful!