Python, remove all non-alphabet chars from string

Question

I am writing a python MapReduce word count program. Problem is that there are many non-alphabet chars strewn about in the data, I have found this post Stripping everything b

Answer 1

You can use the re.sub() function to remove these characters:

>>> import re
>>> re.sub("[^a-zA-Z]+", "", "ABC12abc345def")
'ABCabcdef'

re.sub(MATCH PATTERN, REPLACE STRING, STRING TO SEARCH)

• "[^a-zA-Z]+" - look for any group of characters that are NOT a-zA-z.
• "" - Replace the matched characters with ""