>>> import string
>>> s = "Alice!"
>>> s.strip(string.punctuation)
Out[1]: 'Alice'
>>> s = "??Alice!,???---"
>>> s.strip(string.punctuation)
Out[1]: 'Alice'
>>> s.strip(string.punctuation).lower()
Out[1]: 'alice'
>>> s = ",:-123,,"
>>> s.strip(",:-")
Out[1]: '123'
>>> s.strip(",-")
Out[1]: ':-123'
>>> print(string.punctuation)
!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~