Search for a word in a list

Question

I want to search for the existence of the word hi .

import re
word = 'hi?'

cleanString = re.sub('\W+',' ', word)
print(cleanString.lower())

GREETING_INPUTS = ("hello", 'hi', 'hii', "hey")
if cleanString.lower() in GREETING_INPUTS:
    print('yes')
else:
    print('no')

When word = 'hi' , it prints yes . But for word = 'hi?' , it prints no . Why is it so and please suggest any solution.

Answer 1

Replace this line:

cleanString = re.sub('\W+',' ', word)

With:

cleanString = re.sub('\W+','', word)

Because you're replacing all the matches of '\\W+' with ' ' , a space, so the string would be 'hi ' , so then you need to replace it with empty string '' for it to work, the string would become 'hi'