How to Replace Non-ASCII Characters with a Single Space in Python?

Replacing Non-ASCII Characters with a Single Space

In Python, replacing non-ASCII characters with a space is not a trivial task. Many solutions exist to remove non-ASCII characters, but replacement remains an uncommon requirement.

The provided function, remove_non_ascii_1, effectively removes all non-ASCII characters. remove_non_ascii_2, on the other hand, replaces non-ASCII characters with spaces, but the number of spaces corresponds to the character's code point size.

Now, let's address the central question:

How can we replace all non-ASCII characters with a single space?

Solution 1:

<code class="python">def replace_with_space(text):
    return ''.join([i if ord(i) < 128 else ' ' for i in text])</code>

This approach employs a conditional expression within the list comprehension of ''.join(). Characters with ASCII values under 128 remain unchanged, while non-ASCII ones are replaced with a space.

Solution 2:

<code class="python">import re

def replace_with_space(text):
    return re.sub(r'[^\x00-\x7F]+', ' ', text)</code>

In this solution, the character in the regular expression ensures that consecutive non-ASCII characters are replaced with a single space. This eliminates the issue in remove_non_ascii_2 where multiple spaces were inserted.

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