title: Python String Cleanup + Manipulation (Accented Characters)
body: <p>I have a database full of names like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>John Smith  
  Scott J. Holmes  
  Dr. Kaplan  
  Ray's Dog  
  Levi's  
  Adrian O'Brien  
  Perry Sean Smyre  
  Carie Burchfield-Thompson  
  Björn Árnason
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>There are a few foreign names with accents in them that need to be converted to strings with non-accented characters.</p>
  
  <p>I'd like to convert the full names (after stripping characters like " ' " , "-") to user logins like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>john.smith  
  scott.j.holmes  
  dr.kaplan  
  rays.dog  
  levis
  adrian.obrien  
  perry.sean.smyre
  carie.burchfieldthompson  
  bjorn.arnason
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So far I have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Fullname.strip()  # get rid of leading/trailing white space
  Fullname.lower() # make everything lower case
  
  
  ... # after bad chars converted/removed
  Fullname.replace(' ', '.') # replace spaces with periods
  </code></pre>