Replace the single quote (') character from a string

Question

I need to strip the character "'" from a string in python. How do I do this?

I know there is a simple answer. Really what I am looking for is how to write ' in my code. for example \n = newline.

Answer 1

As for how to represent a single apostrophe as a string in Python, you can simply surround it with double quotes ("'") or you can escape it inside single quotes ('\'').

To remove apostrophes from a string, a simple approach is to just replace the apostrophe character with an empty string:

>>> "didn't".replace("'", "") 'didnt' 

Answer 2

Here are a few ways of removing a single ' from a string in python.

• str.replace

  replace is usually used to return a string with all the instances of the substring replaced.

  "A single ' char".replace("'","") 

• str.translate

  In Python 2

  To remove characters you can pass the first argument to the funstion with all the substrings to be removed as second.

  "A single ' char".translate(None,"'") 

  In Python 3

  You will have to use str.maketrans

  "A single ' char".translate(str.maketrans({"'":None})) 

• re.sub

  Regular Expressions using re are even more powerful (but slow) and can be used to replace characters that match a particular regex rather than a substring.

  re.sub("'","","A single ' char") 

Other Ways

There are a few other ways that can be used but are not at all recommended. (Just to learn new ways). Here we have the given string as a variable string.

• Using list comprehension

  ''.join([c for c in string if c != "'"]) 

• Using generator Expression

  ''.join(c for c in string if c != "'") 

Another final method can be used also (Again not recommended - works only if there is only one occurrence )

• Using list call along with remove and join.

  x = list(string) x.remove("'") ''.join(x)