Remove Substring From a String in Python

In this tutorial, we will look at how to remove a substring from a string in Python with the help of some examples.

How to remove a substring from a string?

You can use the string replace() function to remove a substring from a string in Python. Use the replace() function to replace the substring with an empty string. Let’s look at an example –

# create a string
s = "Wingardium...Leviosa..."
# remove substring
s.replace("...", '')

Output:

WingardiumLeviosa

Here, we removed the substring “…” from the string “Wingardium…Leviosa…”.

Note the that string replace() function will replace every occurrence of the substring in the string.

Remove substring from the beginning of a string

If you specifically want to remove a substring only from the beginning of a string, slice the string starting from the length of the substring.

# create a string
s = "Capt. Rogers and Capt. Bakshi"
# store the substring to be removed from the beginning
sub = "Capt."
# remove substring
s[len(sub):]

Output:

' Rogers and Capt. Bakshi'

The substring is removed from the front. Since we only want to remove the substring from the beginning, we use slicing to only keep the part of the string that comes after the substring.

Also, note that this method will not work if the substring is not present at the beginning of the string. This is because we are slicing the string irrespective of whether the substring is present or not in the string.

Remove substring from the end of a string

Similarly, if you want to remove a substring only from the end of a string, slice the string from its beginning to the starting index of the substring. Using a negative index can be helpful here.

# create a string
s = "one mississippi two mississippi"
# store the substring to be removed from the end
sub = "mississippi"
# remove substring
s[:-len(sub)]

Output:

'one mississippi two '

The resulting string doesn’t have the substring in the end.

Again, note that this method will not work if the substring is not present at the end of the string. This is because we are slicing the string irrespective of whether the substring is present or not in the string.

You might also be interested in –

• Remove First Character From String in Python
• Remove Last Character From String in Python
• Python – Remove Non Alphanumeric Characters from String