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Chapter 8: Strings as a sequence

Replace string with blanks

face Josiah Wang Joe Stacey

One more short exercise!

Write a function blankify() that takes a str as an input argument, and returns a str that replaces all occurrences of the first character of the string with the character "_".

For example, "my name is maria" would become "_y na_e is _aria". The first letter is "m", so the function will return a new string with all the "m" blanked out with an underscore.

For simplicity, assume that the function is case sensitive. That is, "My name is Maria" will return "_y name is _aria", where the "m" in "name" is not replaced since it is not a capital "M".

Sample inputs and outputs

>>> blankify("easy peasy lemon squeezy")
'_asy p_asy l_mon squ__zy'
>>> blankify("Baby I was born this way")
'_aby I was born this way'
>>> blankify("baby I was born this way")
'_a_y I was _orn this way'
>>> blankify(" amazing grace how sweet the sound")
'_amazing_grace_how_sweet_the_sound'
>>> blankify("")
''