Title: Replace Characters
Slug: replace_characters
Summary: How to remove characters to clean unstructured text data for machine learning in Python.
Date: 2016-09-06 12:00
Category: Machine Learning
Tags: Preprocessing Text Authors: Chris Albon

Preliminaries



In [1]:

    
# Import library
import re

Create Text



In [2]:

    
# Create text
text_data = ['Interrobang. By Aishwarya Henriette',
             'Parking And Going. By Karl Gautier',
             'Today Is The night. By Jarek Prakash']

Replace Character (Method 1)



In [3]:

    
# Remove periods
remove_periods = [string.replace('.', '') for string in text_data]

# Show text
remove_periods









    Out[3]:





['Interrobang By Aishwarya Henriette',
 'Parking And Going By Karl Gautier',
 'Today Is The night By Jarek Prakash']

Replace Character (Method 2)



In [4]:

    
# Create function
def replace_letters_with_X(string: str) -> str:
    return re.sub(r'[a-zA-Z]', 'X', string)

# Apply function
[replace_letters_with_X(string) for string in remove_periods]









    Out[4]:





['XXXXXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX',
 'XXXXXXX XXX XXXXX XX XXXX XXXXXXX',
 'XXXXX XX XXX XXXXX XX XXXXX XXXXXXX']