I used regular expressions to get a string from a web page and part of the string may contain something I would like to replace with something else. How would it be possible to do this? My code is this, for example:
stuff = "Big and small"
if stuff.find(" and ") == -1:
# make stuff "Big/small"
else:
stuff = stuff
>>> stuff = "Big and small"
>>> stuff.replace(" and ","/")
'Big/small'
Use the replace() method on string:
>>> stuff = "Big and small"
>>> stuff.replace( " and ", "/" )
'Big/small'
You can easily use .replace() as also previously described. But it is also important to keep in mind that strings are immutable. Hence if you do not assign the change you are making to a variable, then you will not see any change.
Let me explain by;
>>stuff = "bin and small"
>>stuff.replace('and', ',')
>>print(stuff)
"big and small" #no change
To observe the change you want to apply, you can assign same or another variable;
>>stuff = "big and small"
>>stuff = stuff.replace("and", ",")
>>print(stuff)
'big, small'
For simple replacements, str.replace() works fine!
But for multiple replacements or more flexible patterns, use re.sub():
import re
stuff = "Big and small & tiny or huge"
stuff = re.sub(r" and | & | or ", "/", stuff)
# 'Big/small/tiny/huge'
This allows you to:
Replace multiple patterns at once
Use regex for complex matches
Scale better than chaining .replace()
