Replace first occurrence of string in Python

Question

I have some sample string. How can I replace first occurrence of this string in a longer string with empty string?

regex = re.compile('text')
match = regex.match(url)
if match:
    url = url.replace(regex, '')

I want to replace first occurence of 'text' in my url string — marks34
– marks34, Commented Jan 7, 2011 at 17:55

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

379

string replace() function perfectly solves this problem:

string.replace(s, old, new[, maxreplace])

Return a copy of string s with all occurrences of substring old replaced by new. If the optional argument maxreplace is given, the first maxreplace occurrences are replaced.

>>> u'longlongTESTstringTEST'.replace('TEST', '?', 1)
u'longlong?stringTEST'

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Jan 7, 2011 at 17:55

virhilo

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Comments

Konrad Rudolph · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-07 17:55:14Z

27

Use re.sub directly, this allows you to specify a count:

regex.sub('', url, 1)

(Note that the order of arguments is replacement, original not the opposite, as might be suspected.)

answered Jan 7, 2011 at 17:55

Konrad Rudolph

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