How to replace the some characters from the end of a string?

Question

I want to replace characters at the end of a python string. I have this string:

 s = \"123123\"

I want to replace the last 2 with

Answer 1

When the wanted match is at the end of string, re.sub comes to the rescue.

>>> import re
>>> s = "aaa bbb aaa bbb"
>>> s
'aaa bbb aaa bbb'
>>> re.sub('bbb$', 'xxx', s)
'aaa bbb aaa xxx'
>>> 

Answer 2

This is one of the few string functions that doesn't have a left and right version, but we can mimic the behaviour using some of the string functions that do.

>>> s = '123123'
>>> t = s.rsplit('2', 1)
>>> u = 'x'.join(t)
>>> u
'1231x3'

or

>>> 'x'.join('123123'.rsplit('2', 1))
'1231x3'