How to remove/replace strings before and after nth special character in a string?

Question

How can I remove the third _ and all strings before and also the 4th _ and all string after that using Python Replace method

st = "the_gis_osm_natural_a_free_1.shp"

Why would you want to do that with `str.replace`? There's like a dozen better solutions. — Aran-Fey, Oct 18 '18 at 20:27
I am not sure about replace but I am sure I do not want to use the` [:]` method as the number of strings are dynamically changing so I thought many is better to eliminate strings based on the special characters which are always there — Mona Coder, Oct 18 '18 at 20:30
Possible duplicate of [Replace nth occurrence of substring in string](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35091557/replace-nth-occurrence-of-substring-in-string) — Mark Cook, Oct 18 '18 at 20:30

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 18 '18 at 20:31

3

You could split the string by _ and then join the result:

start, end = 3, 4
filename = "the_gis_osm_natural_a_free_1.shp"
print('_'.join(filename.split("_")[start:end]))

Output

natural

answered Oct 18 '18 at 20:31

Dani Mesejo

1 Answers1