Trying to count words in a string

Question

I\'m trying to analyze the contents of a string. If it has a punctuation mixed in the word I want to replace them with spaces.

For example, If Johnny.Appleseed!is:a*good

Answer 1

I know that this is an old question but...How about this?

string = "If Johnny.Appleseed!is:a*good&farmer"

a = ["*",":",".","!",",","&"," "]
new_string = ""

for i in string:
   if i not in a:
      new_string += i
   else:
      new_string = new_string  + " "

print(len(new_string.split(" ")))