Question

I have some strings which starts with dots, and I want to delete it. Which is the best way.
And if the next caracter isn’t a “/” add it.
I’m new in python and I’ve been trying to do something like this to erase dots but there is a syntax error.

while (re.match(r'\.*', url[0]).end()) = 0:
   url = url[1:]

• …./xxx —> /xxx
• .xxx —> /xxx
• ..ab —> /ab
• /ab —> /ab
• ca —> /ca

This is what I’m trying to do.

Answer 1

To get rid of the dots:

mystr = '...../your_string'
mystr = '/' + mystr.lstrip('./')

and the result should be:

/your_string

regardless of whether it begins with dots or slashes (they all will be replaced with single slash).