Remove leading zeros in forecast period string

I am needing to format forecast period columns to later merge with another data frame.

Columns of my data frame are:

current_cols = [
    '01+11',
    '02+10',
    '03+09',
    '04+08',
    '05+07',
    '06+06',
    '07+05',
    '08+04',
    '09+03',
    '10+02',
    '11+01'
]

desired_out = [
    '1+11',
    '2+10',
    '3+9',
    '4+8',
    '5+7',
    '6+6',
    '7+5',
    '8+4',
    '9+3',
    '10+2',
    '11+1'
]

Originally, I tried to split the list by split('+'), and use lstrip('0') for each element in the list. Then recombine elements within tuple with + in between.

Is there a better approach? I'm having trouble combining elements in tuples back together, with + in between. Help would be much appreciated.

Solution

You can use re module for the task:

import re

pat = re.compile(r"\b0+")

out = [pat.sub(r"", s) for s in current_cols]
print(out)

Prints:

[
    "1+11",
    "2+10",
    "3+9",
    "4+8",
    "5+7",
    "6+6",
    "7+5",
    "8+4",
    "9+3",
    "10+2",
    "11+1",
]