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Try this:

import re

mystr = 'This is a string, with words!'
wordList = re.sub("[^\w]", " ",  mystr).split()

How it works  :

From the docs :

re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)

Return the string obtained by replacing the leftmost non-overlapping occurrences of pattern in string by the replacement repl. If the pattern isn’t found, string is returned unchanged. repl can be a string or a function.

so in our case :

pattern is any non alphanumeric character.

[\w] means any alphanumeric character and is equal to the character set [a-zA-Z0-9_]

a to z  , A to Z , ) to 9 and underscore.

so we match any non alphanumeric character and replace it with a space .

and then we split() it which splits string by space and converts it to a list

so 'hello-world'

becomes 'hello world'

with re.sub

and then ['hello' , 'world']

after split()

let me know if any doubts come up  .

Try this:

import re

mystr = 'This is a string, with words!'
wordList = re.sub("[^\w]", " ",  mystr).split()

How it works:

From the docs :

re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)

Return the string obtained by replacing the leftmost non-overlapping occurrences of pattern in string by the replacement repl. If the pattern isn’t found, string is returned unchanged. repl can be a string or a function.

so in our case :

pattern is any non-alphanumeric character.

[\w] means any alphanumeric character and is equal to the character set [a-zA-Z0-9_]

a to z, A to Z , 0 to 9 and underscore.

so we match any non-alphanumeric character and replace it with a space .

and then we split() it which splits string by space and converts it to a list

so 'hello-world'

becomes 'hello world'

with re.sub

and then ['hello' , 'world']

after split()

let me know if any doubts come up.

Try this:

import re

mystr = 'This is a string, with words!'
wordList = re.sub("[^\w]", " ",  mystr).split()

How it works :

From the docs :

re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)

Return the string obtained by replacing the leftmost non-overlapping occurrences of pattern in string by the replacement repl. If the pattern isn’t found, string is returned unchanged. repl can be a string or a function;

so in our case :

pattern is any non alphanumeric character  .

[\w] means any alphanumeric character and is equal to the character set [a-zA-Z0-9_]

a to z , A to Z , ) to 9 and underscore  .

so we match any non alphanumeric character and replace it with a space .

and then we split() it which splits string by space and converts it to a list

so 'hello-world'

becomes 'hello world'

with re.sub

and then

  ['hello' , 'world']

after split()

Try this:

import re

mystr = 'This is a string, with words!'
wordList = re.sub("[^\w]", " ",  mystr).split()

How it works :

From the docs :

re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)

Return the string obtained by replacing the leftmost non-overlapping occurrences of pattern in string by the replacement repl. If the pattern isn’t found, string is returned unchanged. repl can be a string or a function.

so in our case :

pattern is any non alphanumeric character.

[\w] means any alphanumeric character and is equal to the character set [a-zA-Z0-9_]

a to z , A to Z , ) to 9 and underscore.

so we match any non alphanumeric character and replace it with a space .

and then we split() it which splits string by space and converts it to a list

so 'hello-world'

becomes 'hello world'

with re.sub

and then ['hello' , 'world']

after split()

let me know if any doubts come up .

Try this:

import re

mystr = 'This is a string, with words!'
wordList = re.sub("[^\w]", " ",  mystr).split()

Try this:

import re

mystr = 'This is a string, with words!'
wordList = re.sub("[^\w]", " ",  mystr).split()

How it works :

From the docs :

re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)

Return the string obtained by replacing the leftmost non-overlapping occurrences of pattern in string by the replacement repl. If the pattern isn’t found, string is returned unchanged. repl can be a string or a function;

so in our case :

pattern is any non alphanumeric character .

[\w] means any alphanumeric character and is equal to the character set [a-zA-Z0-9_]

a to z , A to Z , ) to 9 and underscore .

so we match any non alphanumeric character and replace it with a space .

and then we split() it which splits string by space and converts it to a list

so 'hello-world'

becomes 'hello world'

with re.sub

and then

['hello' , 'world']

after split()