Check special symbols in string endings

Question

How to check special symbols such as !?,(). in the words ending? For example Hello??? or Hello,, or Hello! returns True but H!??llo or Hel,lo returns False.

I know how to check the only last symbol of string but how to check if two or more last characters are symbols?

If you want `'H!??llo'` to return `True` then I think you really want to check if any special symbols appear in your string, not just end with them. — Christian Dean, Oct 29 '17 at 22:05
Why do you are about "two or more"? From your example, inspecting the last character is enough. — Reut Sharabani, Oct 29 '17 at 22:06

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 29 '17 at 22:16

You may have to use regex for this.

import re

def checkword(word):
    m = re.match("\w+[!?,().]+$", word)
    if m is not None:
        return True
    return False

That regex is:

\w+          # one or more word characters (a-zA-z)
[!?,().]+    # one or more of the characters inside the brackets
             #   (this is called a character class)
$            # assert end of string

Using re.match forces the match to begin at the beginning of the string, or else we'd have to use ^ before the regular expression.

Vasilis G. · Answer 2 · 2017-10-29T22:35:48.750

1

You can try something like this:

word = "Hello!"

def checkSym(word):
    return word[-1] in "!?,()."

print(checkSym(word))

The result is:

True

Try giving different strings as input and check the results.

In case you want to find every symbol from the end of the string, you can use:

def symbolCount(word):

    i = len(word)-1
    c = 0
    while word[i] in "!?,().":
        c = c + 1
        i = i - 1

    return c

Testing it with word = "Hello!?.":

print(symbolCount(word))

The result is:

edited Oct 29 '17 at 22:35

answered Oct 29 '17 at 22:13

Vasilis G.

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`word[len(word-1]` is just `word[-1]`. Negative indexing goes from the end of the word. – Adam Smith Oct 29 '17 at 22:17

whackamadoodle3000 · Answer 3 · 2017-10-29T22:36:30.650

0

You could try this.

string="gffrwr."
print(string[-1] in "!?,().")

edited Oct 29 '17 at 22:36

answered Oct 29 '17 at 22:14

whackamadoodle3000

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The OP said that they already know how to check only the last character. – trent Oct 29 '17 at 22:23
But my answer still does what the examples in the question say – whackamadoodle3000 Oct 29 '17 at 22:24
`For example Hello??? or Hello,, or Hello! returns True but H!??llo or Hel,lo returns False.` – whackamadoodle3000 Oct 29 '17 at 22:24
Good point. I decided to revoke my downvote since the question is ambiguous, but I can't since the window for doing so has closed. – trent Oct 29 '17 at 22:29

Iosif Serafeimidis · Answer 4 · 2017-10-29T22:23:31.757

0

If you want to get a count of the 'special' characters at the end of a given string.

special = '!?,().'
s = 'Hello???'

count = 0
for c in s[::-1]:
    if c in special:
        count += 1
    else:
        break

print("Found {} special characters at the end of the string.".format(count))

edited Oct 29 '17 at 22:23

answered Oct 29 '17 at 22:19

Iosif Serafeimidis

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Could you explain what the `s[::-1]` syntax does? It seems fairly obvious, but I've never seen it before. – trent Oct 29 '17 at 22:22
It gets the list 's' and returns a shallow copy starting from the last element and ending at the first. Take a look here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3705670/best-way-to-create-a-reversed-list-in-python – Iosif Serafeimidis Oct 29 '17 at 22:25

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 29 '17 at 22:36

0

You can use re.findall:

import re
s = "Hello???"
if re.findall('\W+$', s):
   pass

answered Oct 29 '17 at 22:36

Ajax1234

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Check special symbols in string endings

5 Answers5