Remove special characters from the string

Question

In the following string how to remove all the special characters

str1="0Cell Phones: Smartphone,\x02\x05\x0e\x02\x05Mobile Phone - Best Buy13AT&T Wireless: AT&T Phones & Cell Phone Plans - Best Buy4\x02\x05\x0e\x02\x05Cell Phones: Smartphone, Mobile Phone - Best Buy1\x02\x05\x0e\x02\x05AT&T Wireless: AT&T Phones & Cell Phone Plans - Best Buy"

:) i meant the characters that were ti be removed are \x021\x05....... — Rajeev, Jan 10 '13 at 11:16
possible duplicate of [Removing control characters from a string in python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4324790/removing-control-characters-from-a-string-in-python) — tripleee, Jan 10 '13 at 11:16
What about the `1` in there?, `\x02` is one character, so is `\x05` and there is a `1` in between. — Martijn Pieters, Jan 10 '13 at 11:17

Ashwini Chaudhary · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-10T11:49:40.143

2

using ord():

In [35]: str1="0Cell Phones: Smartphone,\x02\x05\x0e\x02\x05Mobile Phone - Best Buy13AT&T Wireless: AT&T Phones & Cell Phone Plans - Best Buy4\x02\x05\x0e\x02\x05Cell Phones: Smartphone, Mobile Phone - Best Buy1\x02\x05\x0e\x02\x05AT&T Wireless: AT&T Phones & Cell Phone Plans - Best Buy"

In [36]: "".join(x for x in str1 if 31 < ord(x) <127)

Out[36]: '0Cell Phones: Smartphone,Mobile Phone - Best Buy13AT&T Wireless: AT&T Phones & Cell Phone Plans - Best Buy4Cell Phones: Smartphone, Mobile Phone - Best Buy1AT&T Wireless: AT&T Phones & Cell Phone Plans - Best Buy'

First 32 are non-printing characters, this range includes return ,backspace etc and 32-127 are the printable ASCII characters.

128-255: extended ASCII

ord() returns this integer value for a single character and we can filter it by 31 < ord(x) <127.

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edited Jan 10 '13 at 11:49

answered Jan 10 '13 at 11:27

Ashwini Chaudhary

232,417
55
437
487

yes great but but what does ord(x) stand for? – Rajeev Jan 10 '13 at 11:30
note: you can use `31 < ord(x) < 128` – wim Jan 10 '13 at 11:33
@Rajeev it's a built-in http://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html#ord. – Ashwini Chaudhary Jan 10 '13 at 11:35
where did u get the list? – Rajeev Jan 10 '13 at 12:16
@Rajeev http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII or http://www.asciitable.com/. – Ashwini Chaudhary Jan 10 '13 at 12:18

Remove special characters from the string

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