Python Regex sub on single character

Question

Is there a way to perform a sub on only one character of a matching pattern?

For example, if I have the string

"This is a word. This is another word. H.E. Stein"

and I want to perform a sub on just the '.'s at the end of a sentence so it becomes

"This is a word This is another word H.E. Stein"

How should I go about doing this?

Why RegEx and did you Google?

thefourtheye
– thefourtheye

2014-02-06 04:09:54 +00:00
Commented Feb 6, 2014 at 4:09 — thefourtheye
– thefourtheye, Commented Feb 6, 2014 at 4:09

falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-06 04:26:47Z

3

You don't need to use regular expression:

>>> "qwerty.".replace('.', '', 1) # 1 -> replace count (only once)
'qwerty'

To delete the last character, use slice:

>>> "qwerty."[:-1]
'qwerty'

UPDATE according to the question edit.

>>> text = "This is a word. This is another word. H.E. Stein"
>>> re.sub(r'(\w{2})\.', r'\1', text)
'This is a word This is another word H.E. Stein'

(\w{2})\.: to match a period just after two word characters. capture the word characters as group 1. later referenced as \1.

edited Feb 6, 2014 at 4:26

answered Feb 6, 2014 at 4:10

falsetru

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3 Comments

Mozbi Over a year ago

The reason I need regular expressions is because I might have a sentence that is: "This is a word. This is another word. H.E. Stein." And I want to be able to get rid of all the periods at the end of sentences but not acronyms.

falsetru Over a year ago

@Mozbi, So you want "This is a word This is another word H.E. Stein" as a reuslt. Am I right?

Mozbi Over a year ago

Thanks a lot falsetru! you're awesome. Thanks for the exaplanations

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