A better way to rewrite multiple appended replace methods using an input array of strings in python?

Question

I have a really ugly command where I use many appended \"replace()\" methods to replace/substitute/scrub many different strings from an original string. For example:

<

Answer 1

How about using re?

import re

def make_xlat(*args, **kwds):  
    adict = dict(*args, **kwds)  
    rx = re.compile('|'.join(map(re.escape, adict)))  
    def one_xlat(match):  
        return adict[match.group(0)]  
    def xlat(text):  
        return rx.sub(one_xlat, text)  
    return xlat

replaces = {
    "a": "b",
    "well": "hello"
}

replacer = make_xlat(replaces)
replacer("a well?")
# b hello?

You can add as many items in replaces as you want.