Question

How can I replace a hyphens in the middle of a word using python3 and re.sub()?

“-ice-cream- – hang-out” -> “-ice cream- – hang out”

Thanks,

Barry

EDIT: I tried

self.lines = re.sub(r'\w(-)\w', " ", self.lines)

but wasn’t sure how to proceed. I like the /b way of doing it.

Answer 1

re.sub(pattern, repl, string[, count, flags]) see docs.python.org

Your pattern would be r'\b-\b'

See the pattern here on Regexr

And replace this with a space (' ')

The r before the regex string deifnes a raw string, that means you don’t need double escaping.

\b is a word boundary, that means it will match on a - when there is a word character before and after.