Stripping Non-Alphanumeric Characters in Python

In Python, removing non-alphanumeric characters from a string requires a slightly different approach compared to PHP.

Pythonic Methods

For a truly "Pythonic" solution, consider the following methods:

• Join Alphanumeric Characters: Use a list comprehension to iterate over the characters in the string and join only the alphanumeric ones.
• Filter Alphanumeric: Use the filter() function and str.isalnum() to filter out non-alphanumeric characters.

Alternative Approaches

For performance considerations, other methods may be faster:

• Regex Substitution with [\W_] : Compile a regular expression ([\W_] ) to match and substitute all non-alphanumeric characters.
• **Regex Substitution with pattern.sub(): For repeated substitution, precompile the regular expression using re.compile() and then use pattern.sub().

Performance Benchmarking

Here are timing results for various methods, using the string.printable string:

The timings show that using the precompiled regular expression with pattern.sub() is the fastest method.