I have filenames with the particular format as given
II.NIL.10.BHZ.M.2058.190.160877
II.NIL.10.BHA.M.2008.190.168857
II.NIL.10.BHB.M.2078.198.160857
.
.
.
I want to remove the BH?.M part with the value in a string variable in name.
name=['T','D','FG'.....]
expected output
II.NIL.10.BHT.2058.190.160877
II.NIL.10.BHD.2008.190.168857
II.NIL.10.BHFG.2078.198.160857
.
.
.
Is it possible with str.replace()?
You could use the built-in regex module (re) alongside the following pattern to effectively replace the content in your strings.
Pattern
'(?<=BH)[A-Z]+\.M'
This pattern looks behind (non-matching) to ensure to check for the substring 'BH', then matches on any uppercase character [A-Z] one or more times + followed by the substring '.M'.
Solution
The below solution uses re.sub() alongside the pattern outlined above to return a string with the substring matched by the pattern replaced with that defined here as replacement.
import re
original = 'II.NIL.10.BHB.M.2078.198.160857'
replacement = 'FG'
output = re.sub(r'(?<=BH)[A-Z]+\.M', replacement, original)
print(output)
Output
II.NIL.10.BHFG.2078.198.160857
Processing multiple files
To repeat this process for multiple files you could apply the above logic within a loop/comprehension, running the re.sub() function on each original/replacement pairing and storing/processing appropriately.
The below example uses the data from your original question alongside the above logic to create a list containing the results of each re.sub() operation by way of a dictionary mapping between the original filenames and substrings to be inserted using re.sub().
import re
originals = [
'II.NIL.10.BHZ.M.2058.190.160877',
'II.NIL.10.BHA.M.2008.190.168857',
'II.NIL.10.BHB.M.2078.198.160857'
]
replacements = ['T','D','FG']
mapping = {originals[i]: replacements[i] for i, _ in enumerate(originals)}
results = [re.sub(r'(?<=BH)[A-Z]+\.M', v, k) for k,v in mapping.items()]
for r in results:
print(r)
Output
II.NIL.10.BHT.2058.190.160877
II.NIL.10.BHD.2008.190.168857
II.NIL.10.BHFG.2078.198.160857
Nope, you cannot use str.replace with a wildcard. You will have to use regex with something such as the following
import re
filenames = ['II.NIL.10.BHA.M.2008.190.168857 ', 'II.NIL.10.BHB.M.2078.198.160857',
'II.NIL.10.BHC.M.2078.198.160857']
name = ['T','D','FG']
newfilenames = []
for i in range(len(filenames)):
newfilenames.append(re.sub(r'BH.?\.M', 'BH'+name[i], filenames[i]))
print(' '.join(newfilenames)) # outputs II.NIL.10.BHT.2008.190.168857 II.NIL.10.BHD.2078.198.160857 II.NIL.10.BHFG.2078.198.160857
You can use iter with next in the replacement lambda of re.sub:
import re
name = iter(['T','D','FG'])
s = """
II.NIL.10.BHZ.M.2058.190.160877
II.NIL.10.BHA.M.2008.190.168857
II.NIL.10.BHB.M.2078.198.160857
"""
result = re.sub('(?<=BH)\w\.\w', lambda x:f'{next(name)}', s)
Output:
II.NIL.10.BHT.2058.190.160877
II.NIL.10.BHD.2008.190.168857
II.NIL.10.BHFG.2078.198.160857
str.replace()doesn't work with wildcards. You could use re.sub() instead.