Python - How to Remove Words That Started With Number and Contain Period-CodePudding

What is the best way to remove words in a string that start with numbers and contain periods in Python?

this_string = 'lorum3 ipsum 15.2.3.9.7 bar foo 1. v more text 46 2. here and even more text here v7.8.989'

If I use Regex:

re.sub('[0-9]*\.\w*', '', this_string)

The result will be:

'lorum3 ipsum  bar foo  v more text 46  here and even more text here v'

I'm expecting the word v7.8.989 not to be removed, since it's started with a letter.

It will be great if the removed words aren't adding the unneeded space. My Regex code above still adds space.

CodePudding user response：

You can use this regex to match the strings you want to remove:

(?:^|\s)(?=[0-9] \.[0-9.]*(?:\s|$))[0-9.]

It matches:

(?:^|\s) : beginning of string or whitespace
(?=[0-9] \.[0-9.]*(\s|$)) : a lookahead that asserts the next character is a digit; there are only digits and .s between this character and the end of string or the next whitespace; and that there is at least one . in this part
[0-9.] : some number of digits and periods

You can then replace any matches with the empty string. In python

this_string = 'lorum3 ipsum 15.2.3.9.7 bar foo 1. v more text 46 2. here and even more text here v7.8.989 and also 1.2.3c as well'
result = re.sub(r'(?:^|\s)(?=[0-9] \.[0-9.]*(?:\s|$))[0-9.] ', '', this_string)

Output:

lorum3 ipsum bar foo v more text 46 here and even more text here v7.8.989 and also 1.2.3c as well

CodePudding user response：

If you don't want to use regex, you can also do it using simple string operations:

res = ''.join(['' if (e.startswith(('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9')) and '.' in e) else e ' ' for e in this_string.split()])