An isalpha() that accepts underscores as well

[Alex Martelli]

Zajcev Evgeny <zevlg at yandex.ru> wrote:
   ...
> > The following will work, and probably only be twice as slow as
> > 'isalpha'  :-) :
> >
> > def alfa(w):
> >    return w.replace('_', '').isalpha()
> 
> Yeah, great performance indeed, thanks!

Except it rejects a w that's JUST an underscore, while it would accept a
w that's just a letter, which seems weird to me.  Using 'a' as the
second argument of the replace call, as somebody else suggested, appears
to produce a more sensible uniformity.


Alex