Replace multiple characters in a string using string.translate() (python)

If you need to replace a character in a string, you can use string.replace(old, new) or re.swap(pattern, new, string) if you need regex.

If you need to replace many characters at once, it can be easier to use the string method string.translate(table) which returns a copy of the string in which each character has been mapped through the given translation table. The translation table can be conveniently created from a character to character dict mapping using the str.maketrans() method.

See this example from the 2020 Advent of Code Day 5:

chars_to_swap = {'B': '1',
                 'F': '0',
                 'R': '1',
                 'L': '0'}

'BFFFBBFRRR'.translate(str.maketrans(chars_to_swap)

returns: 1000110111