Find a word in a line no matter how it's written

Question

I'm trying to find a word in a simple string no matter how it's written. For example:

'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet lorem.'

Let's say I search for 'lorem' written in lowercase and I'd like to replace both 'lorem' and 'Lorem' with 'example'. The thing is, I want to search and replace the word no matter how it's written.

I think this should be done using regex but I'm not very familiar with it. Maybe you guys can help.

a regular expression in combination with the `sub()` function and the `i` modifier might do that. — Klaus D., Mar 26 '18 at 10:46
If you don't want to use regex, you can do `'lorem' in my_str.lower()` (or `'LOREM' in my_str.upper()`) — Bailey Parker, Mar 26 '18 at 10:47

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 26 '18 at 10:47

1

import re
sentence = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet lorem."
search_key = "Lorem"
print(re.sub(r'%s' % search_key.lower(), 'example', sentence.lower()))
>>> example ipsum dolor sit amet example.

answered Mar 26 '18 at 10:47

Veera Balla Deva

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6
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There is no need to use regex here if you are going to do the lowering yourself (and not use things like word boundaries). – Bailey Parker Mar 26 '18 at 10:48
1

This does make you lose info about capitalization for the not-to-be-replaced words though. – Davide Fiocco Mar 26 '18 at 10:49

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 26 '18 at 10:47

0

You just need to make the letters upper or lower case. I made lower case for this time.

import re

x='Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet lorem.'.lower()
y=input(" What word do you want to chage?").lower()


if not y in x:
    print("This word is not in the sentence. You cannot change it!")
else:
    z= y + " which word you want to write instead?"
    z=input(z)
    t=re.sub(y,z,x)
    print(t)

answered Mar 26 '18 at 10:47

Land Owner

182
11

There is no need to use regex here if you are going to do the lowering yourself (and not use things like word boundaries). – Bailey Parker Mar 26 '18 at 10:48
I just used regex to replace the word – Land Owner Mar 26 '18 at 10:52

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 26 '18 at 10:53

0

Below code should work for you.

import re
pattern_rep = re.compile(re.escape('lorem'), re.IGNORECASE)
new_pattern=pattern_rep.sub('example', 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet lorem')
print(new_pattern)

answered Mar 26 '18 at 10:53

Vignesh Ramsubbose

71
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Austin · Answer 4 · 2018-03-26T11:03:07.803

0

Another way without regex (works for your example in the question):

s = 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet lorem.'
print(s.replace('lorem', 'example').replace('Lorem', 'example'))
# example ipsum dolor sit amet example.

edited Mar 26 '18 at 11:03

answered Mar 26 '18 at 10:57

Austin

25,759
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Find a word in a line no matter how it's written

4 Answers4