title: How to remove multiple patterns of special characters in Python Regex Dataframe
body: <p>So I have a dataframe called <code>usa_sub_states</code> with a column called <code>'state'</code>.</p>
  <p>In the column of <code>state</code> there are 5 states with non-alphabetic strings.</p>
  <pre><code>Massachusetts[C]
  Pennsylvania[C]
  Rhode Island[D]
  Virginia[C]
  Hawai'i
  </code></pre>
  <p>now I was wondering if there is a way I can replace all the special characters with empty string so that they all come out as a regular state name.</p>
  <pre><code>usa_sub_states.state.replace(to_replace=r'[\W]', value='', regex=True, inplace=True) 
  </code></pre>
  <p>but for some reason this deleted all the content of the column and makes it an empty string.</p>