remove empty quotes from string using regex

Question

I want to remove punctuation such as " ", ' ', , , "", '' from my string using regex. The code so far I've written only removes the ones which space between them. How do I remove the empty ones such as '',

#Code
s = "hey how ' ' is the ` ` what are '' you doing `` how is everything"
s = re.sub("' '|` `|" "|""|''|``","",s)
print(s)

My expected outcome:

hey how is the what are you doing how is everything

use ? after the space to match on it, optionally. re.sub("' ?'|` ?`|" ?""',"",s) — Ruzihm
– Ruzihm, Commented Sep 24, 2018 at 20:58
Why use regex? You can create a new string, loop through your original string and add characters to your new string if they are not punctuation: newstr = "" for char in mystr: if char not in ('"', ... (put punctuation characters here)): newstr += char — Joel
– Joel, Commented Sep 24, 2018 at 21:02
You want to remove paired quotes with/without whitespace in between ? You can't just match stuff like "" without matching all quotes. — user557597
– user557597, Commented Sep 24, 2018 at 21:59

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-24 20:59:09Z

4

You may use this regex to match all such quotes:

r'([\'"`])\s*\1\s*'

Code:

>>> s = "hey how ' ' is the ` ` what are '' you doing `` how is everything"
>>> print (re.sub(r'([\'"`])\s*\1\s*', '', s))
hey how is the what are you doing how is everything

RegEx Details:

([\'"`]): Match one of the given quotes and capture it in group #1
\s*: Match 0 or more whitespaces
\1: Using back-reference of group #1 make sure we match same closing quote
\s*: Match 0 or more whitespaces

RegEx Demo

answered Sep 24, 2018 at 20:59

anubhava

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Comments

sacuL · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-24 21:04:33Z

1

In this case, why not match all word characters, and then join them?

' '.join(re.findall('\w+',s))
# 'hey how is the what are you doing how is everything'

answered Sep 24, 2018 at 21:04

sacuL

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