How to remove special characters from txt files using Python

Question

from glob import glob
pattern = \"D:\\\\report\\\\shakeall\\\\*.txt\"
filelist = glob(pattern)
def countwords(fp):
    with open(fp) as fh:
        return len(fh.rea         


        

Answer 1

import re
string = open('a.txt').read()
new_str = re.sub('[^a-zA-Z0-9\n\.]', ' ', string)
open('b.txt', 'w').write(new_str)

It will change every non alphanumeric char to white space.