3 Ways to Remove character from a string in Python

In this article, I will introduce 3 ways to remove a specific character from a string in Python.

1. replace()

replace(A, B) replaces A in a string with B. This can be used to remove certain characters by replacing them with empty('').

str = "Hello, World, Python"

new_str = str.replace(',', '')
print(new_str)

Output:

Hello World Python

If you want to delete only the first occurrence of a certain character without deleting all of them, you can pass the number of deletions as the third argument, as in the example below.

str = "Hello, World, Python"

new_str = str.replace(',', '', 1)
print(new_str)

Output:

Hello World, Python

In addition, you can delete not only characters but also strings as follows.

str = "Hello, World, Python"

new_str = str.replace('World,', '')
print(new_str)

Output:

Hello,  Python

2. Regex

sub(regex, replacement, str) finds the regex pattern in the string and replaces the corresponding part with the replacement. This can be used to delete specific characters.

In this example, it replaces , with empty("") to remove it.

import re

str = "Hello, World, Python"
result = re.sub(",", "", str)
print(result)

Output:

Hello World Python

The example below removes all occurrences of the string ,, He and Py. In this pattern, the | is used to add multiple patterns, like meaning OR.

import re

str = "Hello, World, Python"
result = re.sub(",|He|Py", "", str)
print(result)

Output:

llo World thon

3. for loop

You can implement a code to directly delete a specific character using a loop. When you loop through the string like for char in str, you traverse each character.

The example below removes the character if it is one of HWP by using the replace function. By doing this for all characters, you can confirm that the desired string has been completely deleted.

str = "Hello, World, Python"
result = str
for char in str:
    if char in "HWP":
        result = result.replace(char, '')

print(result)

Output:

ello, orld, ython