Can I make a code in python that ignores special characters such as commas, spaces, exclamation points, etc?

Question

I want to create a code that will return \"true\" (if I type in a palindrome regardless of case or if there are special characters in it), and \"false\" otherwise. The code I ha

Answer 1

You need to filter before testing then:

letters = [c.casefold() for c in my_str if c.isalpha()]

would pick out only the letters and lowercase them, after which you can test of those letters form a palindrome:

return letters == letters[::-1]

This works because str.isalpha() returns True only for letters.

Combined into your function:

def is_palindrome(my_str):
    letters = [c.casefold() for c in my_str if c.isalpha()]
    return letters == letters[::-1]

Demo:

>>> def is_palindrome(my_str):
...     letters = [c.casefold() for c in my_str if c.isalpha()]
...     return letters == letters[::-1]
... 
>>> is_palindrome("Rats live on no evil star")
True
>>> is_palindrome("Hello World!")
False
>>> is_palindrome("Madam, I'm Adam")
True