Remove all hex characters from string in Python

Question

Although there are similar questions, I can\'t seem to find a working solution for my case:

I\'m encountering some annoying hex chars in strings, e.g.

\'         


        

Answer 1

Just remove all non-ASCII characters:

>>> s.decode('utf8').encode('ascii', errors='ignore')
'http://www.google.com blah blah#%#@$^blah'

Other possible solution:

>>> import string
>>> s = '\xe2\x80\x9chttp://www.google.com\xe2\x80\x9d blah blah#%#@$^blah'
>>> printable = set(string.printable)
>>> filter(lambda x: x in printable, s)
'http://www.google.com blah blah#%#@$^blah'

Or use Regular expressions:

>>> import re
>>> re.sub(r'[^\x00-\x7f]',r'', s) 
'http://www.google.com blah blah#%#@$^blah'

Pick your favorite one.