Python – removing emojis from a string in Python

emojipythonspecial charactersstringunicode

I found this code in Python for removing emojis but it is not working. Can you help with other codes or fix to this?

I have observed all my emjois start with \xf but when I try to search for str.startswith("\xf") I get invalid character error.

emoji_pattern = r'/[x{1F601}-x{1F64F}]/u'
re.sub(emoji_pattern, '', word)

Here's the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 52, in <module>
    re.sub(emoji_pattern,'',word)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/re.py", line 151, in sub
    return _compile(pattern, flags).sub(repl, string, count)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/re.py", line 244, in _compile
    raise error, v # invalid expression
sre_constants.error: bad character range

Each of the items in a list can be a word ['This', 'dog', '\xf0\x9f\x98\x82', 'https://t.co/5N86jYipOI']

UPDATE:
I used this other code:

emoji_pattern=re.compile(ur" " " [\U0001F600-\U0001F64F] # emoticons \
                                 |\
                                 [\U0001F300-\U0001F5FF] # symbols & pictographs\
                                 |\
                                 [\U0001F680-\U0001F6FF] # transport & map symbols\
                                 |\
                                 [\U0001F1E0-\U0001F1FF] # flags (iOS)\
                          " " ", re.VERBOSE)

emoji_pattern.sub('', word)

But this still doesn't remove the emojis and shows them! Any clue why is that?

Best Answer

On Python 2, you have to use u'' literal to create a Unicode string. Also, you should pass re.UNICODE flag and convert your input data to Unicode (e.g., text = data.decode('utf-8')):

#!/usr/bin/env python
import re

text = u'This dog \U0001f602'
print(text) # with emoji

emoji_pattern = re.compile("["
        u"\U0001F600-\U0001F64F"  # emoticons
        u"\U0001F300-\U0001F5FF"  # symbols & pictographs
        u"\U0001F680-\U0001F6FF"  # transport & map symbols
        u"\U0001F1E0-\U0001F1FF"  # flags (iOS)
                           "]+", flags=re.UNICODE)
print(emoji_pattern.sub(r'', text)) # no emoji

Output

This dog 😂
This dog

Note: emoji_pattern matches only some emoji (not all). See Which Characters are Emoji.

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

It appears that the guidance in this area may have changed, as StyleCop now enforces the use of the C# specific aliases.

Python – How to execute a program or call a system command

Use the subprocess module in the standard library:

import subprocess
subprocess.run(["ls", "-l"])

The advantage of subprocess.run over os.system is that it is more flexible (you can get the stdout, stderr, the "real" status code, better error handling, etc...).

Even the documentation for os.system recommends using subprocess instead:

The subprocess module provides more powerful facilities for spawning new processes and retrieving their results; using that module is preferable to using this function. See the Replacing Older Functions with the subprocess Module section in the subprocess documentation for some helpful recipes.

On Python 3.4 and earlier, use subprocess.call instead of .run:

subprocess.call(["ls", "-l"])

Best Answer

Output

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This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

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