I have a long string of data which looks like:
dstgfsda12345.123gsrsvrvsdfcsd23456.234tsrsd
Notice that the '12345.123' pattern is the same. I want to split the string on it using python (so s.split(<regex>)).
What would be the appropriate regex?
'[0-9]{5}.[0-9]{3}'
does not work; I presume it expects whitespace around it(?).
Just escape ., and you are done:
\d{5}\.\d{3}
You can use Regex token \d as a shorthand for [0-9].
Example:
>>> re.split(r'\d{5}\.\d{3}', 'dstgfsda12345.123gsrsvrvsdfcsd23456.234tsrsd')
['dstgfsda', 'gsrsvrvsdfcsd', 'tsrsd']
I don't understand exactly what's your actual need but seems that you want your regex to isolate each occurrence of 5 digits, dot, 3 digits.
So instead of '[0-9]{5}.[0-9]{3}' you must use '[0-9]{5}\.[0-9]{3}', because . matches any character, while \. matches only a dot.
Your regex should be '\d{5}\.\d{3}'.
Check the usage of . instead of \.. That is because, '.' (Dot.) in the default mode, matches any character except a newline. Refer regex document. Whereas \s means dot in your string.
For example:
import re
my_string = 'dstgfsda12345.123gsrsvrvsdfcsd23456.234tsrsd'
my_regex = '\d{5}\.\d{3}'
re.split(my_regex, my_string)
# returns: ['dstgfsda', 'gsrsvrvsdfcsd', 'tsrsd']
Explanation on how '\d{5}\.\d{3}' works:
\d means any digit between 0-9. \d{5} sub-string with any 5 consecutive digits. \. means digits followed by single .. At last \d{3} means any 3 digits after .
