re.subn()

re.subn(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)

Return a 2-tuple containing (new_string, number). new_string is the string obtained by replacing the leftmost non-overlapping occurrences of the pattern in the source string by the replacement repl. number is the number of substitutions that were made. repl can be either a string or a callable; if a string, backslash escapes in it are processed. If it is a callable, it’s passed the match object and must return a replacement string to be used.