Removes token beginning with specific characters

Question

Hi I am trying to remove all those token which are contained within the my predefined list (prefixes). Below is my code and is not removing the tokens.

prefixes = ('#', '@')
tokens = [u'order', u'online', u'today', u'ebay', u'store', u'#hamandcheesecroissant', u'#whoopwhoop', u'\u2026']

for token in tokens:
    if token.startswith(prefixes):
       tokens.remove(token)

Answer 1

It doesn't really work to remove items from a list whilst iterating over it.

You can use a list comprehension

tokens = [token for token in tokens if not token.startswith(prefixes)]

Or create another list, and then append the items you want to keep to that list instead:

new_tokens = []

for token in tokens:
    if not token.startswith(prefixes):
       new_tokens.append(token)