Remove character from string Python

In this post, you will learn how to remove characters from a string using the Python programming language. In the development process, sometimes we want to remove all occurrences of a character from a string. There are different ways to remove specific characters from a string. Here, we have mentioned most of them.

Python remove character from string using replace() function

The replace() method of Python returns a copy of the string where all occurrences of a substring are replaced with another substring. The syntax of the replace() method-

string.replace(old, new, count)

Here, old is the string you search for, new is the string to replace the old value with, and count is the number of times you want to replace the old substring with the new substring.

Remove a character from a string using replace() method

In the given example, we have removed a specified character from a string using the replace() method. It removes the semicolon character from the original string and replaces all instances of that character with an empty string.

txt = "Success ;is ;a journey."

x = txt.replace(";", "")

print("Original string:", txt)
print("New string:", x)

Original string: Success ;is ;a journey.
New string: Success is a journey.

Remove multiple characters from a string using replace() method

Suppose there is a requirement to remove multiple characters from a string. This can also be done by the remove() method. In the given example, we have used the replace() method inside a for loop to remove multiple characters from a string. It removes the semicolon character from the original string and replaces all instances of that character with an empty string.

txt = "Success; is a journey, not; a destination!"
remove_chars = ";!"

print("Original string:", txt)

for character in remove_chars :
	txt = txt.replace(character, "")

print("New string:", txt)

Original string: Success; is a journey, not; a destination!
New string: Success is a journey, not a destination

Python remove character from string using translate() function

The translate() function of Python enables us to map the characters in a string, replacing those in one table with those in another. And, the 'maketrans()' function in the string module makes it easy to create the mapping table. The syntax of the Python translate() method is-

str.translate(table[, deletechars])

Here, table is the required parameter. It is translation table, created by using the maketrans() function, and deletechars is the list of characters removed from the string.

Remove a character from a string using translate() method

In the given example, we have used the translate() method to remove all the percentages from the specified string. It replaces every instance of the "%" character with a None value.

import string
 
# initializing string 
txt = "Welcome to etutorialspoint%%"

final_txt = txt.translate({ ord("%"): None })

print("Original String - ", txt)
print("New String - ", final_txt) 

Original String -  Welcome to etutorialspoint%%
New String -  Welcome to etutorialspoint

Remove multiple characters from a string using translate() method

We can also remove multiple characters from a string using the translate() method. To achieve this, we iterate over a list of characters that we want to remove from a string. If one of these characters is found, it is replaced with None.

import string
 
# initializing string 
txt = "The highest *result of education; is% tolerance"
 
# printing original string 
print ("Original String - " + txt) 
 
elem_chars = {sp_character: ' ' for sp_character in string.punctuation}
elem_chars[' '] = ' '
table = str.maketrans(elem_chars)
txt = txt.translate(table) 
 
# printing resultant string 
print ("New String - " + str(txt)) 

Original String - The highest *result of education; is% tolerance
New String - The highest  result of education  is  tolerance

Remove character from string using join() function

The join() method is a Python string method and returns a string by joining all the elements of an iterable, separated by a string separator. We can use this to remake the string or remove the unwanted characters. Here is the syntax of the join() function-

string.join(iterable)

Here, iterable is the required parameter. It is an iterable object where all the returned values are strings.

# initializing characters list
special_chars = ['*', '!', ";"]
 
# initializing test string 
txt = "Success ;is *a journey!"
 
# printing original string 
print ("Original string : " + txt)
 
# remove special_chars 
new_txt= ''.join(i for i in txt if not i in special_chars)
 
# printing resultant string 
print("New string : " + str(new_txt))

Original string : Success ;is *a journey!
New string : Success is a journey

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