CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonwindowsfilenamesstring-parsing
MxLDevs
MxLDevs

Reputation: 19526

Python String parsing: filenames with spaces

This probably isn't the most common filename parsing problem, but I have a program that displays a list of files in the following format:

Filename.ext Location

Some examples would be

sampleFile.jpg C:\Images\my jpgs
another file.bmp C:\Images\myBmps

The filename and the location is separated by a single space. As shown, I can have spaces in my filename.

I want to extract the filename from each line but can't seem to find a good way to do so. I thought of searching the index of a particular character then extract substring from 0 to (index - offset), where offset is the number of characters I should go back. But I don't think there is a character that I could search on that will guarantee a hardcoded offset would work.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3295

Answers (3)

kurumi
kurumi

Reputation: 25599

Well, if you have distinct location, eg C:\ , D:\ etc, you can just split on these characters

import re
f=open("file")
for line in f:
    print re.split("[C-Z]:",line)[0]
f.close(0

Upvotes: 1

Tomas Aschan
Tomas Aschan

Reputation: 60604

Do you have periods (.) in your file names, other than at the end right before the extension? If not, you should be able to parse something like this:

1 find first instance of '.'
2 step to the next space
3 that space is the delimiter between file name and location

Upvotes: 1

Doug T.
Doug T.

Reputation: 65619

I'd probably uses a regex for grabbing anything that started with a drive letter to the end of the line, something like:

 import re
 matchWinPaths = re.compile("^.*([A-Z]:\\.+$)")

then match each line with

 matches = re.match(line, matchWinPaths)
 winPath = matches.group(1)

Upvotes: 2

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