how to match `“` with regex in python?

Question

There is a symbol in tweets : “

“@BrownieSWP: High is s***????” you like 12 tf

The symbol is not " . I write this regex to match it:

re.sub('(“|”)', '"', tweet)

This regex (“|”) worked in sublime text. But it didn't work in python.

Answer 1

The character you have copy/pasted is a U+201C "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK". In the re.sub() you also have the corresponding right quotation mark U+201D . Perhaps the environment in which you tried to paste it wasn't set up to handle Unicode correctly, and converted it to some other encoding. (See also How do I see the current encoding of a file in Sublime Text 2? )

You can always use Python's escape codes to unambiguously and ASCII-compatibly refer to a Unicode character; re.sub(u'[\“\”]', '', tweet)

Answer 2

It works for me,

>>> s = r"“@BrownieSWP: High is s***????” you like 12 tf"
>>> m = re.sub(r'[”“]', r'', s)
>>> m
'@BrownieSWP: High is s***???? you like 12 tf'