How to exclude a character from a regex group?

Question

I want to strip all non-alphanumeric characters EXCEPT the hyphen from a string (python). How can I change this regular expression to match any non-alphanumeric char except the hyphen?

re.compile('[\W_]') 

Thanks.

Answer 1

You could just use a negated character class instead:

re.compile(r"[^a-zA-Z0-9-]") 

This will match anything that is not in the alphanumeric ranges or a hyphen. It also matches the underscore, as per your current regex.

>>> r = re.compile(r"[^a-zA-Z0-9-]") >>> s = "some#%te_xt&with--##%--5 hy-phens  *#" >>> r.sub("",s) 'sometextwith----5hy-phens' 

Notice that this also replaces spaces (which may certainly be what you want).

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Edit: SilentGhost has suggested it may likely be cheaper for the engine to process with a quantifier, in which case you can simply use:

re.compile(r"[^a-zA-Z0-9-]+") 

The + will simply cause any runs of consecutively matched characters to all match (and be replaced) at the same time.