Extracting only characters from a string in Python

Question

In Python, I want to extract only the characters from a string.

Consider I have the following string,

input = \"{(\'players\',): 24, (\'year\',): 28         


        

Answer 1

I think that you want all words, not characters.

result = re.findall(r"(?i)\b[a-z]+\b", subject)

Explanation:

"
\b       # Assert position at a word boundary
[a-z]    # Match a single character in the range between “a” and “z”
   +        # Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
\b       # Assert position at a word boundary
"

Answer 2

You could do it with re, but the string split method doesnt take a regex, it takes a string.

Heres one way to do it with re:

import re
word1 = " ".join(re.findall("[a-zA-Z]+", st))

Answer 3

Or if you want all characters regardless of words or empty spaces

    a = "Some57 996S/tr::--!!ing"
    q = ""
    for i in a:
        if i.isalpha():
            q = "".join([q,i])

print q 'SomeString'

Answer 4

What about doing this?

>>> import ast
>>> " ".join([k[0] for k in ast.literal_eval("{('players',): 24, ('year',): 28, ('money',): 19, ('ipod',): 36, ('case',): 23, ('mini',): 46}").keys()])
'case mini year money ipod players'

Answer 5

string.split() doesn't take regular expressions. You want something like:

re.split("[^a-zA-Z]*", "your string")

and to get a string:

" ".join(re.split("[^a-zA-Z]*", "your string"))

Answer 6

You can take the approach of iterating through the string, and using the isalpha function to determine if it's a alpha character or not. If it is you can append it to the output string.

a = "Some57 996S/tr::--!!ing"
q = ""
for i in a:
    if i.isalpha():
        q = "".join([q,i])