Removing punctuation in python and changing to all lower case

Question

The code below takes a string and checks to see if it's a palindrome. Write a function that takes in the input string and removes the spaces, returning a string without spaces. Try it first on your own first but if you get stuck please look on-line (just cite your references). Python has many built-in methods for string manipulation, or write it with a for loop. Bonus points for removing punctuation and changing all text lower case.

My code so far:

orig_text = input("Enter a string to check if it is a palindrome: ")

if orig_text.replace(" ", "") == orig_text.replace(" ", "")[::-1]:

print(orig_text.replace(" ", ""),"sides reversed is",orig_text.replace(" ", "")[::-1], "\nso it is a palindrome."+ res)

else:

print(orig_text.replace(" ", ""), "is not a palindrome."+ res)

Answer 1

inbuff = " ABBA ??? "

str = inbuff.lower()

str = str.replace("?"," ")

str = str.replace("!"," ")

str = str.replace("."," ")

str = str.replace(";"," ")

str = str.rstrip().lstrip()

txt = str[::-1]

print('>' + txt + '<')

if (txt == str):

print("Palindrome")

else:

print("not a palindrome")