How to delete all instances of a character in a string in python

Question

How do I delete all the instances of a character in this string  Here is my code   def findreplace char  string       place   string index char      string place           return string   However  if I run this  this is what happens    gt  gt  gt  findreplace  i    it is icy   Traceback  most recent call last     File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt    File   lt stdin gt    line 3  in findreplace TypeError   str  object does not support item assignment   Why is this

User · Answer

gt  gt  gt  x    it is icy  replace  i       1   gt  gt  gt  x  t is icy    Since your code would only replace the first instance  I assumed that s what you wanted  If you want to replace them all  leave off the 1 argument   Since you cannot replace the character in the string itself  you have to reassign it back to the variable   Essentially  you have to update the reference instead of modifying the string

User · Answer

Strings are immutable in Python  which means once a string is created  you cannot alter the contents of the strings  If at all  you need to change it  a new instance of the string will be created with the alterations   Having that in mind  we have so many ways to solve this   Using str replace    gt  gt  gt   it is icy  replace  i        t s cy   Using str translate    gt  gt  gt   it is icy  translate None   i    t s cy   Using Regular Expression    gt  gt  gt  import re  gt  gt  gt  re sub r i        it is icy    t s cy   Using comprehension as a filter    gt  gt  gt     join  char for char in  it is icy  if char     i     t s cy   Using filter function   gt  gt  gt     join filter lambda char  char     i    it is icy     t s cy     Timing comparison  def findreplace m string  char       m string   list m string      for k in m string          if k    char              del m string m string index k        return    join m string   def replace m string  char       return m string replace  i        def translate m string  char       return m string translate None   i    from timeit import timeit  print timeit  findreplace  it is icy   i      from   main   import findreplace   print timeit  replace  it is icy   i      from   main   import replace   print timeit  translate  it is icy   i      from   main   import translate     Result  1 64474582672 0 29278588295 0 311302900314   str replace and str translate methods are 8 and 5 times faster than the accepted answer   Note  Comprehension method and filter methods are expected to be slower  for this case  since they have to create list and then they have to be traversed again to construct a string  And re is a bit overkill for a single character replacement  So  they all are excluded from the timing comparison

User · Answer

I suggest split  not saying that the other answers are invalid  this is just another way to do it    def findreplace char  string      return    join string split char     Splitting by a character removes all the characters and turns it into a list  Then we join the list with the join function  You can see the ipython console test below  In 112   findreplace  i    it is icy   Out 112    t s cy    And the speed     In 114   timeit  findreplace  it is icy   i      from   main   import findreplace   Out 114   0 9927914671134204   Not as fast as replace or translate  but ok

User · Answer

s1    source string   char    find this character   repl    replace with this character def findreplace s1  char  repl       s1   s1 replace char  repl      return s1    find each  i  in the string and replace with a  u  print findreplace  it is icy    i    u     output     ut us ucy

User · Answer

replace   method will work for this  Here is the code that will help to remove character from string  lets say  j word    Stringtoremove  word    String       for letter in word      if j word find letter     -1          continue     else           remove matched character        j word   j word replace letter      1    Output j word    toremove

User · Answer

Try str replace    string    quot it is icy quot  print string replace  quot i quot    quot  quot

[python] How to delete all instances of a character in a string in python?

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