s.replace string method, looping through a string

Question

I am attempting to write a method that replaces every occurrence of a letter after the first as a "*" instead of the letter. Examples: "babble" yields "ba**le" "that" yields "tha*"

My code seems to be having an issue with the replace function while looping and I can't quite figure out why.

def fix_start(s):
    if len(s) < 2:
        s = "" 
    else:
        for i in s:
            if i == s[0]:
                if s[0]:
                    continue
                s.replace(s[i], "*")
                i += i
    print(s)

replace doesn't replace in place, it returns a new string. I didn't check the rest of your code, but you need s = s.replace(...) — Thierry Lathuille
– Thierry Lathuille, Commented Sep 24, 2019 at 17:20
As Isaid, I didn't check the rest of your code, so there are probably other problems in it. — Thierry Lathuille
– Thierry Lathuille, Commented Sep 24, 2019 at 17:25

blhsing · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-24 17:34:22Z

1

The str.replace method returns a copy of the original string with all occurrences of the given substring replaced with the given new string, so you can simply slice the input string from the second character and replace all occurrences of the first character with '*', and concatenate it after the first character of the orignal string:

def fix_start(s):
    return s[0] + s[1:].replace(s[0], '*')

so that fix_start('babble') returns: 'ba**le'

answered Sep 24, 2019 at 17:34

blhsing

109k9 gold badges89 silver badges132 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

s.replace string method, looping through a string

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related