Is str.replace(..).replace(..) ad nauseam a standard idiom in Python?

Question

For instance, say I wanted a function to escape a string for use in HTML (as in Django\'s escape filter):

    def escape(string):
        \"\"\"
        Retu         


        

Answer 1

You can use reduce:

reduce(lambda s,r: s.replace(*r),
       [('&', '&'),
        ('<', '<'),
        ('>', '>'),
        ("'", '''),
        ('"', '"')],
       string)