On Jun 27, 3:06 am, John Machin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Jun 27, 6:32 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Hi > > I am a beginner on Python and have a problem.. > > > I have text file and reading it line by line and there are backspace > > characters in it like '\b' or anything you want like "#". I want to > > replace these chars. with Backspace action. I mean deleting the > > previous char. and the \b char also. and writing all cleaned text to a > > file again. > > > How can I do that. > > I haven't seen anything like that for ... ummm, a very long time. Used > for bolding and making up your own characters on a daisy-wheel > printer. Where did you get the file from? > > If there are no cases of multiple adjacent backspaces (e.g. "blahfoo\b > \b\bblah") you can do: > new_line = re.sub(r'.\x08', old_line, '') > > Note: using \x08 for backspace instead of \b to avoid having to worry > about how many \ to use in the regex :-) > > Otherwise you would need to do something like > while True: > new_line = re.sub(r'[^\x08]\x08', '', old_line) > if new_line == old_line: break > old_line = new_line > > And if you were paranoid, you might test for any remaining stray > backspaces, just in case the line contains "illegal" things like > "\bfoo" or "foo\b\b\b\b" etc. > > Cheers, > John
Thanks John I will try it but, do you think regex replacement gonna erase the prev. char.? Thanks a lot for your reply. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
