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how to remove instances and possible multiple instances of a certain word in a string and return a string (CODEWARS dubstep)

I have had a go at the CODEWARS dubstep challenge using python.
My code is below, it works and I pass the kata test. However, it took me a long time and I ended up using a brute force approach (newbie).
(basically replacing and striping the string until it worked)
Any ideas with comments on how my code could be improved please?
TASK SUMMARY:
Let's assume that a song consists of some number of words (that don't contain WUB). To make the dubstep remix of this song, Polycarpus inserts a certain number of words "WUB" before the first word of the song (the number may be zero), after the last word (the number may be zero), and between words (at least one between any pair of neighbouring words), and then the boy glues together all the words, including "WUB", in one string and plays the song at the club.
For example, a song with words "I AM X" can transform into a dubstep remix as "WUBWUBIWUBAMWUBWUBX" and cannot transform into "WUBWUBIAMWUBX".
song_decoder("WUBWEWUBAREWUBWUBTHEWUBCHAMPIONSWUBMYWUBFRIENDWUB")
# => WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIEND
song_decoder("AWUBBWUBC"), "A B C","WUB should be replaced by 1 space"
song_decoder("AWUBWUBWUBBWUBWUBWUBC"), "A B C","multiples WUB should be replaced by only 1 space"
song_decoder("WUBAWUBBWUBCWUB"), "A B C","heading or trailing spaces should be removed"
Thanks in advance, (I am new to stackoverflow also)
MY CODE:
def song_decoder(song):
new_song = song.replace("WUB", " ")
new_song2 = new_song.strip()
new_song3 = new_song2.replace(" ", " ")
new_song4 = new_song3.replace(" ", " ")
return(new_song4)

I don't know if it can improve it but I would use split and join
text = 'WUBWEWUBAREWUBWUBTHEWUBCHAMPIONSWUBMYWUBFRIENDWUB'
text = text.replace("WUB", " ")
print(text)
words = text.split()
print(words)
text = " ".join(words)
print(text)
Result
WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIEND
['WE', 'ARE', 'THE', 'CHAMPIONS', 'MY', 'FRIEND']
WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIEND
EDIT:
Dittle different version. I split usinsg WUB but then it creates empty elements between two WUB and it needs to remove them
text = 'WUBWEWUBAREWUBWUBTHEWUBCHAMPIONSWUBMYWUBFRIENDWUB'
words = text.split("WUB")
print(words)
words = [x for x in words if x] # remove empty elements
#words = list(filter(None, words)) # remove empty elements
print(words)
text = " ".join(words)
print(text)

new to python (as in 1 week in) and need help getting pointed in the right direction

Need to write a code for a school lab.
Input is First name Middle name Last Name
Output needs to be Last name, First initial. Middle Initial.
It must also work with just first and last name.
Examples:
Input: Jane Ann Doe
Output: Doe, J. A.
Input: Jane Doe
Output: Doe, J.
Code thus far is:
# 2.12 Lab, input First name Middle name last name
# result to print Last name, fist initial. Middle initial period.
# result must account for user not having middle name
name = input()
tokens = name.split()
I do not understand how to write an if statement followed by print statement to get the desired output.

name = input("Enter name: ")
tokens = name.split()
if int(len(tokens)) > 2:
print(tokens[-1] + ",", tokens[0][0]+".", tokens[1][0]+".")
else:
print(tokens[-1] + ",", tokens[0][0]+".")

With what you have so far, tokens will be a list of the words you entered, such as ['Jane', 'Ann', 'Doe'].
What you need to do is to print out the last of those items in full, followed by a comma. Then each of the other items in order but with just the first letter followed by a period.
You can get the last item of a list x with x[-1]. You can get each of the others with a loop like:
for item in x[:-1]:
doSomethingWith(item)
And the first character of the string item can be extracted with item[0].
That should hopefully be enough to get you on your way.
If it's not enough, read on, though it would be far better for you if tou tried to nut it out yourself first.
...
No? Okay then, here we go ...
The following code shows one way you can do this, with hopefully enough comments that you will understand:
import sys
# Get line and turn into list of words.
inputLine = input("Please enter your full name: ")
tokens = inputLine.split()
print(tokens)
# Pre-check to make sure at least two words were entered.
if len(tokens) < 2:
print("ERROR: Need at least two tokens in the name.")
sys.exit(0)
# Print last word followed by comma, no newline (using f-strings).
print(f"{tokens[-1]},", end="")
# Process all but the last word.
for namePart in tokens[:-1]:
# Print first character of word followed by period, no newline.
print(f" {namePart[0]}.", end="")
# Make sure line is terminated by a newline character.
print()
You could no doubt make that more robust against weird edge cases like a first name of "." but it should be okay for an educational assignment.
But it handles even more complex names such as "River Rocket Blue Dallas Oliver" (yes, I'm serious, that's a real name).

# 2.12 Lab, input First name Middle name last name
# result to print Last name, fist initial. Middle initial period.
# result must account for user not having middle name
name = input()
tokens = name.split()
if len(tokens) == 2: # to identify if only two names entered
last_name = tokens[1]
first_init = tokens[0][0]
print(last_name, ',', first_init,'.',sep='')
if len(tokens) == 3: # to identify if three names entered
last_name = tokens[2]
first_init = tokens[0][0]
middle_init = tokens [1][0]
print(last_name, ',',' ',first_init,'.', ' ', middle_init,'.',sep='')

Try this code:
a=input()
name=a.split(" ")
index=len(name)
if index==3:
print(f"{name[-1]},{name[-3][0]}.{name[-2][0]}.")
else:
print(f"{name[-1]},{name[-2][0]}.")
Here is the explanation of the code:
First,using input(),we get the name of the person.
Then,we split the name using .split()with the parameter (written in the parenthesis) as " "
next we will find the no.of elements in the list (.split() returns a list) for the if statement
Then we print the output through the if statement shown above and using indexing ,we extract the first letter.

The movie game - skipping "The" at the beginning of a movie

The Movie Game is a game played by two people, and goes as follows. The first player names a movie. The second player then names a new movie whose title starts with the last letter of the movie the first player named.
The game we will ignore the definite article "the" So if a player names the movie "Her Alibi" the next player can name the movie "The Incredibles," since the article "the" is ignored.
How can I remove "The" from the movie title?
def userInput(lastInput):
if lastInput == None:
return str(input("Enter a movie title: ")).lower()
if lastInput[:4] == "The ": # doesn't work
lastInput = lastInput[4:] # doesn't work
while True:
userChoice = str(input("Enter a movie title: ")).lower()
if userChoice[0] == lastInput[-1]:
return userChoice
else:
print("\nInvalid input, what would you like to do?")
instructions()

You can replace the Part of the string In The case You Mentioned THE with an empty string ,
use
The following Code to Remove the word You want from the string
str="The Incredibles"
str.replace("The","")

Consider using regular expressions
import re
a = r'^(\bthe\b)'
sts = ['the incredibles', 'theodore', 'at the mueseum', 'their words' ]
for i in sts:
b = re.sub(a,'', i)
print(b)
The regular expression I am using seems to work, but you might want to test more examples, using this link https://regex101.com/r/pX5sD5/3

You could do this:
if lastInput.lower().startswith("the "): lastInput = lastInput[4:]
Using the startswith() method of strings, you can test for the first word directly (including the space that follows it). In order to support various capitalisation, turning the string to lowercase (using lower()) allows you to only perform one test for any combinations of upper/lower case variants (e.g. "The ", "the ", "THE ").
I also noticed that you are not applying this exclusion logic to the userChoice variable which is where I would have expected this to be used rather than on the lastInput variable.

How do I print the next item in a list that starts with a certain letter/symbol?

So I am making this troubleshooting system related to phones in Python that needs to give a solution after looking at the user's query. In my list, the keywords that will be matched to the user's query are first put in and then the relevant solution to those keywords. The problem is that different issues that the user might have have different number of keywords to choose from and if all of the solutions in my list start with a symbol such as { how can I write a code that prints the next item in the list starting with { ?
storage = ["wet", "water", "toilet", "{Wipe the phone and place it in a bag of rice for 24 hours.}"]
This is an example of the list that I made. The user's query is: "I dropped my phone in the toilet."
The solution to this problem is right after the word 'toilet' starting with a curly bracket. Can you please provide me with a code that will make the program print the next value in the list that starts with a curly bracket?

Given a starting point like:
query = "I dropped my phone in the toilet."
storage = ["wet", "water", "toilet", "{Wipe the phone and place it in a bag of rice for 24 hours.}"]
First we would need some kind of flag that indicates when we have found a matching keyword, lets say:
found_word = False
then we just iterate over storage like so:
for word in storage:
however not all the entries in storage are keywords, some are special values that need to be treated differently:
for word in storage:
if word.startswith("{"):
When we encounter a value like this, if we have found a keyword we want to print out this special value then stop looping:
if word.startswith("{"):
if found_word:
print(word)
break
otherwise if the keyword is in the query then we just set the flag to True:
elif word in query:
found_word = True
so our final code would be:
found_word = False
for word in storage:
if word.startswith("{"):
if found_word:
print(word)
break
elif word in query:
found_word = True
on the other hand, if you used a dict to store your data like:
wet_solve = "Wipe the phone and place it in a bag of rice for 24 hours."
solutions = {"wet":wet_solve, "water":wet_solve, "toilet":wet_solve}
Then you would just need to check all the words in the query for one in the solutions:
for word in query.split():
if word in solutions:
print(solutions[word])

The following will do exactly what you asked: "Can you please provide me with a code that will make the program print the next value in the list that starts with a curly bracket?"
def findNextCurly(keyword):
index = storage.index(keyword) + 1
while not storage[index].startswith("{"):
index = index+1
print (storage[index][1:-1])
>>> findNextCurly('test')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "<stdin>", line 2, in findNextCurly
ValueError: 'test' is not in list
>>> findNextCurly('wet')
Wipe the phone and place it in a bag of rice for 24 hours.
... but nothing more.
The notation string[1:-1] is called string slicing and is explained in the official tutorial. Here it is used to remove the first and last characters from the string – the curly brackets.

The solution given by Rad Lexus will return any value that has a curly brace in it, i.e. it would also print hello{brace. If you only want the ones that start with a letter, try:
storage = ["wet", "water", "toilet", "{Wipe the phone and place it in a bag of rice for 24 hours.}"]
for s in storage:
if s.startswith("{"):
print(s)

Searching for key words in python

If I ask a question in Python and the answer is chicken, I want to output something related to chicken. And, if the answer is beef I want to output something related to beef, dependent on the answer provided.
How could I structure this? Should I have multiple lists with key words and related answers? Newbie.

I would use a dict of lists:
import random
similar_words = {
'chicken': ['poultry', 'wings'],
'beef': ['cow', 'ground-beef', 'roast-beef', 'steak'],
}
word = raw_input("Enter a word: ").strip()
if word in similar_words:
print random.choice(similar_words[word])
else:
print "Not found!"
See the Python manual on Data Structures for more information. Note that I'm also using random.choice() to select a random item from each list.
Here's the output of it running:
$ python words.py
Enter a word: chicken
poultry
$ python words.py
Enter a word: beef
cow
$
Edit: You were asking in the comments how you could do this if the words were contained inside a whole sentence. Here's one example:
words = raw_input("Enter a word or sentence: ").strip().split()
for word in words:
if word.lower() in similar_words:
print random.choice(similar_words[word.lower()])
else:
print "Not found!"
Here, we're using split() to split the sentence into a list of words. Then we loop through each word, and see if (the lowercase version of) the word exists in our dict, and do the same thing as we did above with a single word.