How to extract only characters from a given string in Python
In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to extract only the characters from a given string in Python. So let us first clear some basics before diving into the main topic.
String:
The ‘string’ is one of the many data types in python and strings are usually enclosed in ” ” (double quotes) or ‘ ‘ (single quotes) in python.
We can format a string as multi-line using triple quotes (‘ ‘ ‘ ___’ ‘ ‘) single triple quotes or double triple quotes (” ” ” ____ ” ” “). The line breaks, we give as input are reflected in the output exactly the same.
Extracting only characters from string in Python:
- METHOD 1: using ord(char)
#input random string from the user rand_string= input("Enter a random mix string: ") #declare a variable to store the char elements only_char="" #for loop to check the string for char elements for char in rand_string: #ord(char) method to check for char elements by their ascii value #checking for char elements with upper case if ord(char) >=65 and ord(char) <=90: only_char+=char #checking for char elements with lower case elif ord(char) >=97 and ord(char)<=122: only_char+=char #the last print statement gives the output having the filtered string with only char elements print(only_char)
OUTPUT:
Enter a random mix string: This123is456thefiltered789string0 Thisisthefilteredstring
EXPLANATION:
- Accept random string as input from a user, declare a variable to store the input.
- Using a for loop check the entire string and extract only character elements using the ord(char) function.
- ord(char) method is an inbuilt method in python. It checks character elements for their ASCII value.
- An empty variable is initialized to store a string with a filtered string having only char elements. This variable is also used to print the output.
- Method 2: using isalpha( ) function
This is another simple method for extracting only character elements from a given string. Following is the code for extracting the character elements from a string using isalpha() function.
#input random string from the user rand_string= input("Enter a random mix string: ") #declare a variable to store the char elements only_char="" #for loop to check the string for char elements for char in rand_string: #isalpha() method is used here to check for alphabets (characters) in the string if char.isalpha(): only_char+=char #the last print statement gives the output having the filtered string with only char elements print(only_char)
OUTPUT:
Enter a random mix string: This123is456thefiltered789string0 Thisisthefilteredstring
EXPLANATION:
- Accept random string as input from a user, declare a variable to store the input.
- Using a for loop check the entire string and extract only character elements using the isalpha() function.
- isalpha() method is an inbuilt method in python. It checks for the presence of character elements in a string.
- An empty variable is initialized to store a string with a filtered string having only char elements. This variable is also used to print the output.
CONCLUSION:
These were the two simple methods for extracting character elements from a string of any given length.
Also read: Extract numbers from a string in Python
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