How Do I Replace Words In a String With Items In a List In Python

Bluffyyy 0
Viewed 52

I have a list of words and a string with spaces to put the words in. I need to be able to distribute the items from the list into the spots in the string.

Example:

list = ['text', 'be', 'there']

text = "This is an example [word]. Normally there would [word] something important here but [word] isn't."

The output would be:

"This is an example text. Normally there would be something important here but there isn't."

I would need the parts with '[word]' to be replaced with an item from the list. I am pretty new to python so forgive me if the answer is obvious.

string list python
4 Answers

They advise using the re library here, however, I think it's easier, easier and better to use simple text.format() formatting

Code example:

list_of_words = ['text', 'be', 'there']

text = "This is an example {}. Normally there would {} something important here but {} isn't.".format(*list_of_words)

The output will look like this:

This is an example text. Normally there would be something important here but there isn't.
Dmitrii Gavrilov0

We can use re.sub along with a callback function:

list = ['text', 'be', 'there']
text = "This is an example [word]. Normally there would [word] something important here but [word] isn't."
output = re.sub(r'\[word\]', list.pop(0), text)
print(output)

This prints:

This is an example text. Normally there would be something important here but there isn't.

The strategy here is that for each [word] match, we call pop(0) on the list of replacements. This returns the first element in that list, while also removing it and queueing up the next replacement.

Tim Biegeleisen0

Try re.sub with custom function:

import re

lst = ["text", "be", "there"]
text = "This is an example [word]. Normally there would [word] something important here but [word] isn't."


text = re.sub(r"\[word\]", lambda _, i=iter(lst): next(i), text)
print(text)

Prints:

This is an example text. Normally there would be something important here but there isn't.
Andrej Kesely0

You can split the input string by [word], zip the resulting list with the input list, flatten the pairs and join them for output:

words = ['text', 'be', 'there']
text = "This is an example [word]. Normally there would [word] something important here but [word] isn't."

print(''.join(w for p in zip(text.split('[word]'), (*words, '')) for w in p))

Demo: https://ideone.com/yMdSOA

blhsing0
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