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I have a list of strings. Some of them contain commas, single quotes, etc. Is there a quick way to replace those characters by blanks? My list looks something like this:

list = {"string1", "bla,bla", "more'stuff", "and more;stuff"}

cheers

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Use

StringReplace[list, PunctuationCharacter -> " "]

(* {"string1", "bla bla", "more stuff", "and more stuff"} *)

PunctuationCharacter is new in version 10.3. The 10.x updates received many new functions for text processing. In older versions I would use an explicit list of possible punctuation characters, i.e.

punctuation = Alternatives@@Characters[",.?:;'\"!-"]

I'm pretty sure I missed some.

StringReplace[list, punctuation -> " "]
(* {"string1", "bla bla", "more stuff", "and more stuff"} *)
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  • $\begingroup$ What is PunctuationCharacter ? $\endgroup$ – eldo Oct 27 '15 at 10:53
  • $\begingroup$ @eldo I updated the answer. $\endgroup$ – Szabolcs Oct 27 '15 at 10:57
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    $\begingroup$ ...and of course, regex: StringReplace[list, RegularExpression["[[:punct:]]"] -> " "]. $\endgroup$ – J. M.'s technical difficulties♦ Oct 27 '15 at 10:59

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