Python String - Remove special characters
Python String - Remove special characters
To remove special characters from a string in Python, you can use a regular expression along with the re
(regular expression) module.
Steps to remove special characters in string
Follow these steps to remove all the special characters in a given string using regular expression re
module.
- Import
re
module. - Given original string is in
original_string
. - To remove the special character, we first define what the allowed characters are in a pattern. Take a pattern that selects characters other than uppercase alphabets
A-Z
, lowercase alphabetsa-z
, numbers0-9
, and single space characters. The pattern would ber'[^A-Za-z0-9 ]'
. - Call
re.sub()
function and pass the pattern, an empty string, and the original string as arguments. The sub() function substitutes all the characters other than specified character groups with an empty string in the original string, and returns the resulting string. - Store the returned string in a variable
cleaned_string
, and you may use it for further processing.
Example
In the following program, we take a string in original_string
, and remove all the special characters using the steps mentioned above.
Python Program
import re
# Given string
original_string = "Hello, @World! 123"
# Pattern
pattern = r'[^A-Za-z0-9 ]'
# Substitute special characters with empty string
cleaned_string = re.sub(pattern, "", original_string)
print(cleaned_string)
Output
Hello World 123