title: Removing special characters and symbols from a string in python
body: <p>I am trying to do what my title says. I have a list of about 30 thousand business addressess, and I'm trying to make each address as uniform as possible</p>
  
  <p>As far as removing weird symbols and characters goes, I have found three suggestions, but I don't understand how they are different.</p>
  
  <p>If somebody can explain the difference, or provide insight into a better way to standardize address information, please and thank you!</p>
  
  <pre><code>address = re.sub(r'([^\s\w]|_)+', '', address)
  
  address = re.sub('[^a-zA-Z0-9-_*.]', '', address)
  
  address = re.sub(r'[^\w]', ' ', address)
  </code></pre>