Is there a faster way to strip punctuation from a string than this? from string import ascii_letters
def strip_punctuation(mystring): newstring = '' for x in mystring: if x in ascii_letters: newstring += x else: pass return newstring In my decryption program I realized I need to strip all the punctuation, and that's the first thing I came up with. I couldn't find a built-in function in the time it took to roll my own. TIA, Wayne -- To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn't. - Primo Levi _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor