Subtract strings

Question

I have two columns of data with strings.
For example,
First colummn contains: xyz
Second colummn contains : test xyz

"test xyz" - "xyz" = "test"
Is it possible to with a python in a simple way?

BartłomiejStaroń · Answer

Thanks a lot. It works great.

KimOllivier · Answer

col1 = "test xyz" col2 = "xyz" print "<%s> " % col1.replace(col2,"").strip() or use regular expressions to be much more precise, with the leading space and the xyz at the end of the string.import re col1 = "test xyz" col2 = "xyz" pattern = re.compile(" ?xyz$") repl = "" result = re.sub(pattern,repl,col1) print "<%s> <%s> <%s> " % (col1,col2,result)