CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonstringlistpython-2.7
user1090614
user1090614

Reputation: 2687

Splitting string in python

I would like to split a sting in python the most efficient way, and the most "python-like" way. Say I have this string:

s = '"Jens", "kasper", "Michael"'

How do I achieve the following list:

names = ["David", "Kasper", "Michael"]

Meaning I would like to strip the names between the curly brackets.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 199

Answers (4)

whats my diamond gaming
whats my diamond gaming

Reputation: 1

I think dawg has the best one, but:

stringthing = "Your string here!=-Hi!"
a = stringthing.split("=-")
print("Thing 1: " + a[0] + " Thing 2: " + a[1])

Upvotes: -1

alecxe
alecxe

Reputation: 473853

Use ast.literal_eval():

Safely evaluate an expression node or a Unicode or Latin-1 encoded string containing a Python expression. The string or node provided may only consist of the following Python literal structures: strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, and None.

>>> from ast import literal_eval
>>> s = '"Jens", "kasper", "Michael"' 
>>> literal_eval(s)
('Jens', 'kasper', 'Michael')
>>> list(literal_eval(s))
['Jens', 'kasper', 'Michael']

Upvotes: 5

dawg
dawg

Reputation: 103814

Let's add a case to your string:

>>> s = '"Jens", "kasper", "Michael", "Jean Paul", "Bond, James"'
                                                        ^^       comma

You can use csv:

>>> import csv
>>> list(csv.reader([s], skipinitialspace=True))[0]
['Jens', 'kasper', 'Michael', 'Jean Paul', 'Bond, James']

Or a regex:

>>> import re
>>> [e.group(1) for e in re.finditer(r'"([^"]+)"',s)]
['Jens', 'kasper', 'Michael', 'Jean Paul', 'Bond, James']

The solution based on splitting on the comma will not work with the embedded comma:

>>> s = '"Jens", "kasper", "Michael"' 
>>> [e.strip().strip('"') for e in s.split(',')]
['Jens', 'kasper', 'Michael', 'Jean Paul', 'Bond', 'James']
                                               ^^^^  wrong answer...

Upvotes: 1

abarnert
abarnert

Reputation: 365707

You can split it like this:

>>> s = '"Jens", "kasper", "Michael"' 
>>> s.split(', ')
['"Jens"', '"kasper"', '"Michael"']

You can strip the quotes like this:

>>> [name.strip('"') for name in s.split(', ')]
['Jens', 'kasper', 'Michael']

But really, you should consider how this weird string was constructed, and do the matching operation, instead of trying to build a parser from first principles. Are these Python literals? JSON strings? Something else? Were they joined together with ', '.join or the CSV module or something else?

Upvotes: 3

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