Remove Punctuations from a Python string

This post will discuss how to remove punctuations from a string in Python.

The solution should remove all English punctuations from the string like a full stop, comma, double-quotes, apostrophe, a hyphen, question mark, colon, exclamation mark, and semicolon.

1. Using `str.translate()` function

An efficient solution is to use the str.translate() function to remove all punctuations from a string. It simply maps each character of the string through a translation table, which can be easily created with the str.maketrans() function.

import string

if __name__ == '__main__':

s = 'Hello, World.'

s = s.translate(str.maketrans('', '', string.punctuation))

print(s) # Hello World

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You can also specify a dictionary to str.maketrans() function.

import string

if __name__ == '__main__':

s = 'Hello, World.'

s = s.translate(str.maketrans({key: None for key in string.punctuation}))

print(s) # Hello World

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Here’s another solution that directly creates character mappings using a dictionary:

import string

if __name__ == '__main__':

s = 'Hello, World.'

s = s.translate(dict.fromkeys(map(ord, string.punctuation)))

print(s) # Hello World

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2. Using Regex

Another option is to use Regular expressions for finding and removing punctuations from a string. Here’s what the regex-based solution would look like:

import re

if __name__ == '__main__':

s = 'Hello, World.'

s = re.sub(r'[.,"\'-?:!;]', '', s)

print(s) # Hello World

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If you have a punctuation string, you can use the following code. It uses the re.escape() function to escape special characters.

import re, string

if __name__ == '__main__':

s = 'Hello, World.'

chars = '[%s]+' % re.escape(string.punctuation)

s = re.sub(chars, '', s)

print(s) # Hello World

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3. Using Generator Expression

Finally, you can write a simple generator expression that filters punctuation marks from a string. The following example demonstrates.

import string

if __name__ == '__main__':

s = 'Hello, World.'

s = ''.join(c for c in s if c not in string.punctuation)

print(s) # Hello World

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Here’s a solution using lambda:

import string

if __name__ == '__main__':

s = 'Hello, World.'

s = ''.join(filter(lambda x: x not in string.punctuation, s))

print(s) # Hello World

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That’s all about removing Punctuations from a string in Python.

Also See:

Remove specific characters from a Python string

Remove non-alphanumeric characters from a Python string

Remove Punctuations from a Python string

1. Using str.translate() function

2. Using Regex

3. Using Generator Expression

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1. Using `str.translate()` function