How to exactly match a word and then replace in Python?

Question

1. Have a list which contains strings etc. as shown below

   strpool = ['fruit,apple:3', '', '[1,abcd, ['fruit,apple'], ['1,kdlld', apple,taste]]']

2. Wanted to search exactly for the word 'apple' and replace with 'apple:3'

3. I tried the below code,

    print str(strpool).replace("apple","apple:3") print (re.sub(r"\\bapple\\b","apple:3",str(strpool)))

4. But its replacing even the apple:3 as well into apple:3:3 , not just the string apple.

5. Thought apple:3 would be considered as a string and that doesn't get changed.

Update: How can I exactly match a string name without any other components attached to it and replace all of them inside a list ?

Tried re.sub but for that need to convert the list to string, instead is there any other way ?

Answer 1

使用否定前瞻来匹配一个单词，除非它后面跟有: 。

print(re.sub(r'\bapple\b(?!:)', 'apple:3', str(strpool))