How do I get str.translate to work with Unicode strings?

Question

I have the following code:

import string
def translate_non_alphanumerics(to_translate, translate_to=\'_\'):
    not_letters_or_digits = u\'!\"#%\\\'()*+,-./:         


        

Answer 1

Instead of having to specify all the characters that need to be replaced, you could also view it the other way around and, instead, specify only the valid characters, like so:

import re

def replace_non_alphanumerics(source, replacement_character='_'):
    result = re.sub("[^_a-zA-Z0-9]", replacement_character, source)

    return result

This works with unicode as well as regular strings, and preserves the type (if both the replacement_character and the source are of the same type, obviously).