Replacing characters in a string (Python) [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to replace a string in a function with another string in Python?

I want to enter any string with any type of character, and if the character is an alphabet, I want to replace it with "^" and get it printed.

For example, if my input is replace('text-here'), I should get the output as "^^^^-^^^^".

I've tried using the following statement, but it just prints whatever my input was. Please help!

def replace(string):

    for x in range(len(string)):
        string.replace(string[x],"^")
    print(string)

I'm new to python, and don't know complex stuff. Please give me easy-to-understand answers. Thanks!

jamylak · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-14 02:07:09Z

3

>>> text = 'text-here'
>>> ''.join('^' if c.isalpha() else c for c in text)
'^^^^-^^^^'

I think this is easy to understand but just in case here is code that shows what it does more simply:

>>> def replace(text):
        new_text = ''
        for c in text:
            if c.isalpha():
                new_text += '^'
            else:
                new_text += c
        return new_text

>>> replace(text)
'^^^^-^^^^'

answered Oct 14, 2012 at 2:07

jamylak

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mjgpy3 · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-14 02:15:32Z

2

You could use Python's Regular Expressions library.

Like so,

import re

re.sub('\w', '^', 'text-here')

# Outputs: "^^^^-^^^^"

answered Oct 14, 2012 at 2:15

mjgpy3

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RHT · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-14 02:23:18Z

1

That's because string is immutable. string.replace(string[x],"^") returns a new object.

Modify 
string.replace(string[x],"^")
to 
string = string.replace(string[x],"^")

and it will work as expected.

answered Oct 14, 2012 at 2:23

RHT

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Marcus · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-14 02:14:53Z

0

Now that your question is on "but it just prints whatever my input was", I would like to tell you that the method str.replace will return a new string instead of to replace the string in place.

>>> a = "foo"
>>> a.replace("foo","bar")
'bar'
>>> a
'foo'

So you need to do string = string.replace(...)

answered Oct 14, 2012 at 2:14

Marcus

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