In Python, how to check if a string only contains certain characters?

Question

In Python, how to check if a string only contains certain characters?

I need to check a string containing only a..z, 0..9, and . (period) and no other character.

Answer 1

Use python Sets when you need to compare hm... sets of data. Strings can be represented as sets of characters quite fast. Here I test if string is allowed phone number. First string is allowed, second not. Works fast and simple.

In [17]: timeit.Timer("allowed = set('0123456789+-() ');p = set('+7(898) 64-901-63 ');p.issubset(allowed)").timeit()

Out[17]: 0.8106249139964348

In [18]: timeit.Timer("allowed = set('0123456789+-() ');p = set('+7(950) 64-901-63 фыв');p.issubset(allowed)").timeit()

Out[18]: 0.9240323599951807

Never use regexps if you can avoid them.