Removing specific substring of a string using slicing

Question

I am currently debugging a function that returns a string that has a specific substring removed. I am not using any shortcuts (e.g. remove_all method); my aim is to keep the idea of this function and only fix the errors.

I have tried slicing the string by skipping the length of substring, but it does not fix the issue.

def remove_substring(string, substring):
    p = string.find(substring)
    # p is the next position in the string where the substring starts
    lsub = len(substring)
    while p >= 0:
        string[p : len(string) - lsub] = string[p + lsub : len(string)]
        p = string.find(substring)
    return string

Whenever I run the function, it gives a TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

You are missing the argument from your method definition. Change it to def remove_substring(string, substring): — jarthur
– jarthur, Commented Aug 29, 2019 at 1:05
Possible duplicate of 'str' object does not support item assignment in Python — hek2mgl
– hek2mgl, Commented Aug 29, 2019 at 1:43

hek2mgl · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-29 01:40:19Z

2

You need to regenerate the str instead of attempting to modify it:

def remove_substring(string, substring):
    lsub = len(substring)
    while True:
        # p is the next position in the string where the substring starts
        p = string.find(substring)
        if p == -1:
            break
        string = string[:p] + string[p+lsub:]
    return string

print(remove_substring('foobarfoobar', 'bar'))

edited Aug 29, 2019 at 1:40

answered Aug 29, 2019 at 1:34

hek2mgl

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Comments

Edward · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-29 03:46:48Z

0

Str is a data type which can not be modified in Python. You should reset whole value instead of modifying by index.

string = string[:p] + string[p+lsub:]

answered Aug 29, 2019 at 3:46

Edward

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