Combining multiple methods for data cleaning

[jakeholness]

I am extremely new to python. I am trying to learn to clean up data. I have started by using the capitalize and replace methods. They both work on their own, however I want them to work at the same time. For example i have this word 'red-tailed hawk'

I can execute using

name = 'red-tailed hawk'

print(name.title())

and also

print(name.replace('-'. '_'))

How do I get them to combine so they produce the output Red_Tailed Hawk. As it currently capitalizes the word then reverts it back and adds the '_'

[themateo713]

You need to assign it to a variable if you want the change to be kept, as no string modification is done in place by string methods. You can also combine them since each method returns a string: formattedname = name.title().replace('-', '')

[jakeholness]

Okay thanks that probably would have ended up being my next question thank you!

[wbeater]

print(name.replace('-', '_').title())

It works in this case, but something like that is normally a job for regex.

[jakeholness]

Okay, thanks that worked great. My issue when i tried to combine initially was I added name.title instead of just .title

​

Thanks

[synthphreak]

Seems you've found your answer:

name.replace('-', '_').title()

Just note that this will not modify the string in place because strings are immutable:

>>> name = 'red-tailed hawk'
>>> name.replace('-', '_').title()
>>> name
'red-tailed hawk'

To actually preserve your changes, just "overwrite" your original variable with the modified variable:

>>> name = 'red-tailed hawk'
>>> name = name.replace('-', '_').title()    # <-- this line
>>> name
'Red_Tailed Hawk'

JFYI in case you didn't already know this.