import string def isPalindrome(s): """ :type s: str :rtype: bool """ # Create a translation table to remove uppercase letters and special characters translation_table = str.maketrans("", "", string.ascii_uppercase + string.punctuation + string.whitespace) # Use the translation table to remove uppercase letters and special characters cleaned_string = s.translate(translation_table) half = len(cleaned_string)/2 first = [] second = [] for i in range(len(half)): return cleaned_string print(isPalindrome("A man, a plan, a canal: Panama"))