Python: Replace "-" with whitespace
<p>I'm stuck on replacing "-" with whitespace in Python. I've searched Stack Overflow and tried the code below, but it doesn't do what I want. </p>

<pre><code>import string

text1 = ['why-wont-these-dashes-go-away']
for i in text1:
 str(i).replace("-", " ")
print "output 1: " 
print text1

text2 = ['why-wont-these-dashes-go-away']
text2 = [x.strip('-') for x in text2]
print "output 2: " 
print text2

text3 = ['why-wont-these-dashes-go-away']
text3 = [''.join(c for c in s if c not in string.punctuation) for s in text3]
print "output 3: " 
print text3

text4 = ['why-wont-these-dashes-go-away']
text4 = [' '.join(c for c in s if c not in string.punctuation) for s in text3]
print "output 4: " 
print text4
</code></pre>

<p>Here's my output:</p>

<pre><code>output 1: 
['why-wont-these-dashes-go-away']
output 2: 
['why-wont-these-dashes-go-away']
output 3: 
['whywontthesedashesgoaway']
output 4: 
['w h y w o n t t h e s e d a s h e s g o a w a y']
</code></pre>

<p>Here's what I want:</p>

<pre><code>['why wont there dashes go away']
</code></pre>

<p>I know text1, text2, and text3 are each lists with one item which is a string. It's probably something small I'm overlooking, any ideas?</p>