ref:    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10017147/python-replace-characters-in-string


Try regular expressions:

a = re.sub('[.!,;]', '', a)

You can also built an expression dynamically from a list of chars:

import re

a = 'a..!b...c???d;;'
chars = [',', '!', '.', ';', '?']

print re.sub('[%s]' % ''.join(chars), '', a)

Translate method works best for plain strings:

s = 'A.B!C?'
print s.translate(None, ''.join(chars))

for unicode strings the code is slightly more complicated:

s = u'A.B!C?'
print s.translate(dict((ord(c), u'') for c in chars))