CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexsplit
Kevin
Kevin

Reputation: 779

Python Regex String not getting split correctly

I am trying to split a line of text that looks something like this

host=randomhostid123 moreinfo id=otherstuffhere version="morestuff" type=TYPEA::TYPEB

i am tying to use split to parse it into

host=randomhostid123 moreinfo
id=otherstuffhere
version="morestuff"
type=TYPEA::TYPEB

to do this I was using

str.split('?[a-zA-Z]*=')

but all this is producing is the original string all over again I think the regex looks ok, but I am new to python regex

Upvotes: 0

Views: 60

Answers (2)

Martin Ender
Martin Ender

Reputation: 44269

You are using str.split(). What you want is re.split:

re.split(r'\s+(?=[a-zA-Z]+=)', str)

This will split on spaces which are followed by words which in turn are immediately followed by =. Note, that you have to put everything but the spaces in a lookahead, so that it is not swallowed by the split operation.

Upvotes: 3

DaoWen
DaoWen

Reputation: 33019

The ? in your regex is being parsed literally, and since there's no ? in your string it doesn't split. I think you may have been going for a regex lookahead match, but string.split doesn't support regexes.

Ah—too long looking at the documentation! m.buettner summarized things very nicely.

Upvotes: 0

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