How to add space before and after specific character using regex in Python?

Question

I have this sentence: transportumum min kalo dari kota|tua | mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?

As you see there are two pipe character in that sentence, I like to add space before and after pipe if it in the middle of word without space. eg: kota|tua to kota | tua

This is my code so far:

def puncNorm(text):
    pat = re.compile(r"\D([|:])\D")
    text = pat.sub(" \\1 ", text)
    return text

text = "transportumum min kalo dari kota|tua | mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?"

text = puncNorm(text)

The result add space to every pipe character. So there are double space in tua | mau:

transportumum min kalo dari kota | tua  |  mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?

My expected result is:

transportumum min kalo dari kota | tua | mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?

What is the best way to solve this?

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-18 07:09:31Z

4

The \D pattern matches any char other than a digit. You may use a word boundary here to make the symbols match only when inside a word:

r'\b([|:])\b'

See the regex demo

Note that you also may get rid of the (...) as you will need to replace the whole match. A backreference to the whole match is \g<0> in Python.

See a Python demo:

import re
rx = r'\b[|:]\b'
s = "transportumum min kalo dari kota|tua | mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?"
print(re.sub(rx, ' \g<0> ', s))
# => transportumum min kalo dari kota | tua | mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?

answered Aug 18, 2017 at 7:09

Wiktor Stribiżew

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Comments

akash karothiya · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-18 07:19:11Z

1

You can simply use quantifiers here like `\s*

* means 0 or more of the preceding expression

>>> text = "transportumum min kalo dari kota|tua | mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?"
>>> re.sub(r'(\s*\|\s*)',' | ',text)
'transportumum min kalo dari kota | tua | mau ke galeri nasional naik transjakarta jurusan apa ya?'

edited Aug 18, 2017 at 7:19

answered Aug 18, 2017 at 7:11

akash karothiya

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4 Comments

Wiktor Stribiżew Over a year ago

This r'(\s*\|\s*)(?is)' pattern will also find | in |||||| string. The (?is) modifiers make no sense here: there is no . nor letters in the pattern.

akash karothiya Over a year ago

should I delete my answer ??

Wiktor Stribiżew Over a year ago

Well, it would be OK if you explained why you think it is helpful for OP. There is a requirement: in the middle of word without space. That is why I added a note.

Aran-Fey Over a year ago

This pattern will catch things like a| b or a |b, which is possibly a good thing; though it's not clear from the OP's limited problem description.

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