Python - Replace multiple character at once with .replace command

Question

Is there any way to replace multiple different characters to another with a single .replace command?

Currently, I'm doing it once per line or through a loop:

 UserName = input("Enter in Username:")
 UserName = UserName.replace("/", "_")
 UserName = UserName.replace("?", "_")
 UserName = UserName.replace("|", "_")
 UserName = UserName.replace(":", "_")
 print(UserName)
 #Here's the second way- through a loop.
 Word = input("Enter in Example Word: ")
 ReplaceCharsList = list(input("Enter in replaced characters:"))
 for i in range(len(ReplaceCharsList)):
 Word = Word.replace(ReplaceCharsList[i],"X")
 print(Word)

Is there a better way to do this?

• Michael Butscher: Look at regular expressions (standard library module re)
• hostingutilities.com: FYI, replace can be chained: UserName = UserName.replace("/", "_").replace("?", "_").replace("|", "_").replace(":", "_")

Answer 1

You can use re.sub with a regex that contains all the characters you want to replace:

import re
username = 'goku/?db:z|?'
print(re.sub(r'[/?|:]', '_', username))
# goku__db_z__

For the case where your user enters the characters to repalce, you can build your regex as a string:

user_chars = 'abdf.#' # what you get from "input"
regex = r'[' + re.escape(user_chars) + ']'
word = 'baking.toffzz##'
print(re.sub(regex, 'X', word))
# XXkingXtoXXzzXX