How to Remove \xa0 from a String in Python

# Table of Contents

1. Remove \xa0 from a string in Python
2. Remove \xa0 from a string using str.replace()
3. Remove \xa0 from a string using split() and join()
4. Remove \xa0 from a string using BeautifulSoup
5. Remove \xa0 from a List of Strings in Python

# Remove \xa0 from a string in Python

Use the unicodedata.normalize() method to remove \xa0 from a string.

The unicodedata.normalize method returns the normal form for the provided Unicode string by replacing all compatibility characters with their equivalents.

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import unicodedata

my_str = 'bobby\xa0hadz'

result = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', my_str)
print(result)  # 👉️ 'bobby hadz'

The unicodedata.normalize() method returns the normal form for the provided Unicode string.

The first argument is the form - NFKD in our case. The normal form NFDK replaces all compatibility characters with their equivalents.

If you get unexpected results when using the NFKD form, try using one of NFC, NFKC and NFD.

The NFKC form first applies compatibility decomposition, then canonical decomposition.

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import unicodedata

my_str = 'bobby\xa0hadz'

result = unicodedata.normalize('NFKC', my_str)
print(result)  # 👉️ 'bobby hadz'

# Remove \xa0 from a string using str.replace()

Alternatively, you can use the str.replace() method.

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my_str = 'bobby\xa0hadz'


result = my_str.replace('\xa0', ' ')
print(result)  # 👉️ 'bobby hadz'

Since the \xa0 character represents a non-breaking space, we can simply replace it with a space.

The str.replace() method returns a copy of the string with all occurrences of a substring replaced by the provided replacement.

The method takes the following parameters:

Note that the method doesn't change the original string. Strings are immutable in Python.

# Remove \xa0 from a string using split() and join()

You can also use the str.split() and str.join() methods to remove the \xa0 characters from a string.

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my_str = 'bobby\xa0hadz'

result = ' '.join(my_str.split())

print(result)  # 👉️ bobby hadz

We used the str.split() method to split the string on each whitespace character.

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my_str = 'bobby\xa0hadz'

# 👇️ ['bobby', 'hadz']
print(my_str.split())

We could have also explicitly passed the \xa0 character in the call to the split() method.

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my_str = 'bobby\xa0hadz'

result = ' '.join(my_str.split('\xa0'))

print(result)  # 👉️ bobby hadz

The last step is to join the list of strings with a space separator.

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my_str = 'bobby\xa0hadz'

# 👇️ bobby hadz
print(' '.join(my_str.split('\xa0')))

The str.join() method takes an iterable as an argument and returns a string which is the concatenation of the strings in the iterable.

# Remove \xa0 from a string using BeautifulSoup

If you use the BeautifulSoup4 module, use the get_text() method to remove the \xa0 characters from a string.

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from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

my_html = 'bobby\xa0hadz'


result = BeautifulSoup(my_html, 'lxml').get_text(strip=True)
print(result) # 👉️ bobby hadz

Make sure you have beautifulsoup4 and lxml installed in order to run the code snippet.

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pip install lxml
pip install beautifulsoup4

# 👇️ or with pip3
pip3 install lxml
pip3 install beautifulsoup4

# Remove \xa0 from a List of Strings in Python

To remove \xa0 characters from a list of strings:

1. Use a list comprehension to iterate over the list.
2. On each iteration, use the str.replace() method to replace occurrences of \xa0 with a space.
3. The strings in the new list won't contain any \xa0 characters.

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my_list = ['bobby\xa0', '\xa0hadz']

result = [string.replace('\xa0', ' ') for string in my_list]

print(result) # 👉️ ['bobby ', ' hadz']

We used a list comprehension to iterate over the list.

On each iteration, we replace occurrences of the \xa0 character with a space and return the result.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

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