replace all characters in a string with asterisks

Question

I have a string

name = \"Ben\"

that I turn into a list

word = list(name)

I want to replace the characters

Answer 1

You may replace the characters of the list with asterisks in the following ways:

Method 1

for i in range(len(word)):
    word[i]='*'

This method is better IMO because no extra resources are used as the elements of the list are literally "replaced" by asterisks.

Method 2

word = ['*'] * len(word)

OR

word = list('*' * len(word))

In this method, a new list of the same length (containing only asterisks) is created and is assigned to 'word'.