Python: merge two subsequent rows by pattern

Question

I am working with data files of a single column containing strings, but sometimes the content of one rows carries over to the next one, like so:

...
"This is a str-
        -ing"
...

This happens multiple times in each file in a non predictable way: is there a method in Python, preferably using pandas, to attach the content of the second row to the first, eliminating the - separator? I have looked far and wide in SO and elsewhere for similar questions, but no solution seems to really apply to my case. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Please provide an exact minimal reproducible example

mozway
– mozway

2024-04-09 18:00:59 +00:00
Commented Apr 9, 2024 at 18:00 — mozway
– mozway, Commented Apr 9, 2024 at 18:00

sgfw · Accepted Answer · 2024-04-09 17:56:17Z

1

Assuming that the pattern here is consistently [hyphen] [newline] [whitespace] [hyphen], you could write a regex that matches that pattern and replace all occurrences of the pattern with an empty string before processing the file in pandas. The regex would look something like "-\w*\n\w*-". The "re" library in python can be used to perform the replace operation.

answered Apr 9, 2024 at 17:56

sgfw

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