Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Python Collections (2016, retired 2019) Lists Disemvowel

Trevor McGill
Trevor McGill
1,409 Points
Posted by Trevor McGill
Trevor McGill
1,409 Points

Removing letters from word function

I’m having issues with the challenge that asks us to remove vowels from a user’s entry. I’ve created a loop to go through the user’s entry and find the vowels to remove it, but I can’t get the function to take out uppercase vowels even when I tried to use letter.upper().

Suggestions?

disemvowel.py 
def disemvowel(word):
        for letter in word:
            if ('a' or 'e' or 'i' or 'o' or 'u') in letter:
                del letter
        return word

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

Logic operators can be used to combine complete expressions, but not parts of expressions. For example:

    if letter == ("a" or "b"):          # this will not match any letter
    if letter == "a" or letter == "b":  # but this will

Also, deleting a loop variable ("del letter") does not have any effect on the loop iterable

And one final hint: "return word" just returns the original word unmodified.

Trevor McGill
Trevor McGill
1,409 Points
Trevor McGill
Trevor McGill
1,409 Points

Thank you for your hint. Why would the del keyword not work in this situation?

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

As I said, deleting the loop variable doesn't have any impact on the original word, but even more important is that Python strings are immutable (they cannot be modified).

You can, however, construct a new string that is a modified copy of the original. The string function "replace" might come in handy.

Trevor McGill
Trevor McGill
1,409 Points
Trevor McGill
Trevor McGill
1,409 Points

Okay, so I tried returning a new string per your recommendations, and I am still not seeing changes when the value is returned. Here’s my code:

def disemvowel(word):

try:
    new_word = word.replace('a''e''i''o''u''A''E''I''O''U','')
    return new_word

except ValueError:
    return new_word
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

You won't need "try/except" for this. And the "replace" function only works on things that match exactly, so if your string has all the vowels it will only remove them if they are also all together in the word.

You may want to use a loop to remove one at a time.