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'.

Answer 2

I want to replace the characters of the list w/ asterisks

Instead, create a new string object with only asterisks, like this

word = '*' * len(name)

In Python, you can multiply a string with a number to get the same string concatenated. For example,

>>> '*' * 3
'***'
>>> 'abc' * 3
'abcabcabc'

Answer 3

Probably you are looking for something like this?

def blankout(instr, r='*', s=1, e=-1):
    if '@' in instr:
        # Handle E-Mail addresses
        a = instr.split('@')
        if e == 0:
            e = len(instr)
        return instr.replace(a[0][s:e], r * (len(a[0][s:e])))
    if e == 0:
        e = len(instr)
    return instr.replace(instr[s:e], r * len(instr[s:e]))

Answer 4

I want to replace the characters of the list with asterisks. How can I do this?

I will answer this question quite literally. There may be times when you may have to perform it as a single step particularly when utilizing it inside an expression

You can leverage the str.translate method and use a 256 size translation table to mask all characters to asterix

>>> name = "Ben"
>>> name.translate("*"*256)
'***'

Note because string is non-mutable, it will create a new string inside of mutating the original one.