Regular expressions to select text from string in Python

Question

I have formatted lines of the text, i.e.

[[item1 *,* {_item2*} *;{item3*}* ;{item4*}*]]

where * means any text between the words and brackets. Is it possible to collect text from * to variables?

item1, after1, before2, item2, after2, item3, after3, item4, after4, afterall = re. ???

Please provide detailed specifications about your "formatted text", preferably some real world examples so we can try them out. — Wang Dingwei
– Wang Dingwei, Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 5:22

zrbecker · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-19 06:00:24Z

2

You should be able to do it with regular expressions.

http://docs.python.org/library/re.html

You can put parenthesis around parts of the expression you want to pull out later.

Are you trying to grab the * parts or the item parts? If you trying to grab the * parts it shouldn't be too hard.

import re

reg = r'\[\[item1 (.*),(.*) {_item2(.*)} (.*);{item3(.*)}(.*) ;{item4(.*)}(.*)\]\]'
match = re.match(reg, text)
# You grab items by index. Starting from 1, 0 is the entire match
item1 = match.group(1)
item2 = match.group(2)

You will probably have to play with it a bit to get it to match what you want.

answered Jan 19, 2011 at 6:00

zrbecker

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