CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonparsingpyparsing
phos4
phos4

Reputation: 11

Parsing and grouping text in a string using Python

I need to parse a series of short strings that are comprised of 3 parts: a question and 2 possible answers. The string will follow a consistent format:

This is the question "answer_option_1 is in quotes" "answer_option_2 is in quotes"

I need to identify the question part and the two possible answer choices that are in single or double quotes.

Ex.: What color is the sky today? "blue" or "grey"
Who will win the game 'Michigan' 'Ohio State'

How do I do this in python?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 352

Answers (4)

PaulMcG
PaulMcG

Reputation: 63709

Pyparsing will give you a solution that will adapt to some variability in the input text:

questions = """\
What color is the sky today? "blue" or "grey"
Who will win the game 'Michigan' 'Ohio State'""".splitlines()

from pyparsing import *

quotedString.setParseAction(removeQuotes)
q_and_a = SkipTo(quotedString)("Q") + delimitedList(quotedString, Optional("or"))("A")

for qn in questions:
    print qn
    qa = q_and_a.parseString(qn)
    print "qa.Q", qa.Q
    print "qa.A", qa.A
    print

Will print:

What color is the sky today? "blue" or "grey"
qa.Q What color is the sky today? 
qa.A ['blue', 'grey']

Who will win the game 'Michigan' 'Ohio State'
qa.Q Who will win the game 
qa.A ['Michigan', 'Ohio State']

Upvotes: 0

Katriel
Katriel

Reputation: 123612

If your format is a simple as you say (i.e. not as in your examples), you don't need regex. Just split the line:

>>> line = 'What color is the sky today? "blue" "grey"'.strip('"')
>>> questions, answers = line.split('"', 1)
>>> answer1, answer2 = answers.split('" "')
>>> questions
'What color is the sky today? '
>>> answer1
'blue'
>>> answer2
'grey'

Upvotes: 1

Constantin
Constantin

Reputation: 28154

>>> import re
>>> s = "Who will win the game 'Michigan' 'Ohio State'"
>>> re.match(r'(.+)\s+([\'"])(.+?)\2\s+([\'"])(.+?)\4', s).groups()
('Who will win the game', "'", 'Michigan', "'", 'Ohio State')

Upvotes: 1

pyfunc
pyfunc

Reputation: 66709

One possibility is that you can use regex.

import re
robj = re.compile(r'^(.*) [\"\'](.*)[\"\'].*[\"\'](.*)[\"\']')
str1 = "Who will win the game 'Michigan' 'Ohio State'"
r1 = robj.match(str1)
print r1.groups()
str2 = 'What color is the sky today? "blue" or "grey"'
r2 = robj.match(str2)
r2.groups()

Output:

('Who will win the game', 'Michigan', 'Ohio State')
('What color is the sky today?', 'blue', 'grey')

Upvotes: 0

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