CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexstring
devang
devang

Reputation: 5516

Splitting a comma-separated string

I have following string, and what I would like to have is split it to get an array of key:value pairs

color:'White', color:('White' or 'Black'),color:'YELLOW,BLACK', price: [11,12], price:{13, 14}, price:[11,13 },price:{ 11,13], color:('White' and 'Black')

Given above string, I would like to get an array with following elements -

color:'White'
color:('White' or 'Black')
color:'YELLOW,BLACK'
price:[11,12]
price:{13, 14}
price:[11,13 }
price:{ 11,13]
color:('White' and 'Black')

I can do the above by parsing the string character by character and appropriately forming groups. I tried some regexp, however, all of them seemed to fail.

I am trying to achieve this in Python, not sure if that would matter. Here's what I tried -

re.split(r'(, *(?=.*:))', "color:'White',color:('White' or 'Black'),color:'DEF,GHI',price:[11,12], price:{13,14}, price:[11,13},price:{11,13]")

The characters between single quotes can be anything, mixture of alpha-numeric, unicode, etc as text may pertain to different languages.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 301

Answers (1)

isedev
isedev

Reputation: 19601

This should do it:

re.split(', *(?=[^,]+?:)',string)

Meaning split on commas only if followed by zero-or-more spaces and a sequence of characters (excluding commas and colons) terminated with a colon.

With your string, it gives:

["color:'White'",
 "color:('White' or 'Black')",
 "color:'YELLOW,BLACK'",
 'price: [11,12]',
 'price:{13, 14}',
 'price:[11,13 }',
 'price:{ 11,13]']

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions