removing commas between numbers and special characters in python

Question

I have a list something like

['Scottish Investment Trust 2, 220 0.92, Financial Services – 6.97,% 750, 000, Ashmore 2, 554 1.06, 175, 000, Close Brothers 2, 704 1.12, 175, 704 1.12, 750, 000, IG Group 6, 034 2.50']

I am trying to remove commas between numbers and % using .replace() and re.sub() however it removes commas from all the places.

The list which I am trying to get should look like this.

['Scottish Investment Trust 2220, 0.92, Financial Services – 6.97% 750000, Ashmore 2554, 1.06, 175000, Close Brothers 2704, 1.12, 175704, 1.12, 750000, IG Group 6034, 2.50']

Trying to remove commas using .replace() however this removes all commas

list2 = [s.replace(',', '') for s in highlights]

Trying to remove commas using re.sub() however this also removes all commas.

list2 = ''.join(list1)
list2 = re.sub(',', '',list2)

How can it be done? Where exactly Am I making a mistake?

Answer 1

The rules governing the process of getting from A->B are not clearly explained but can possibly be deduced from the sample input/output. This code does achieve that transformation but in the absence of a well-defined specification, it may not work in all cases.

ALIST = ['Scottish Investment Trust 2, 220 0.92, Financial Services – 6.97,% 750, 000, Ashmore 2, 554 1.06, 175, 000, Close Brothers 2, 704 1.12, 175, 704 1.12, 750, 000, IG Group 6, 034 2.50']
OLIST = []
for s in ALIST:
    r = []
    try:
        token = iter(s.split())
        while (t := next(token)):
            if t.endswith(',%'):
                r.append(t.replace(',', ''))
            else:
                if t.endswith(','):
                    try:
                        int(t[:-1])
                        n = next(token)
                        if n.endswith(','):
                            n = n[:-1]
                        t = t[:-1] + n + ','
                    except ValueError:
                        pass
                r.append(t)
    except StopIteration:
        pass

    OLIST.append(' '.join(r))
print(OLIST)

Output:

['Scottish Investment Trust 2220, 0.92, Financial Services – 6.97% 750000, Ashmore 2554, 1.06, 175000, Close Brothers 2704, 1.12, 175704, 1.12, 750000, IG Group 6034, 2.50']