Reputation: 7923
My question came along when trying to help in this post: split an enumerated text list into multiple columns
I'm searching for a Regex pattern which splits this string at 1.
, 2.
and 3.
or in general: split after a digit (or more if the list would be longer) followed by a dot. Problem is that there are more numbers in the string which are needed.
test_string = '1. Fruit 12 oranges 2. vegetables 7 carrot 3. NFL 246 SHIRTS'
With this pattern I managed to do so, but I got an empty string at the start and didn't know how to change that.
l1 = re.split(r"\s?\d{1,2}\.", test_string)
# Output l1:
['', ' Fruit 12 oranges', ' vegetables 7 carrot', ' NFL 246 SHIRTS']
So I changed from "split it" to "search something that finds the pattern":
l2 = re.findall(r"(?:^|(?<=\d\.))([\sa-zA-Z0-9]+)(?:\d\.|$)", pattern)
# Output l2:
[' Fruit 12 oranges ', ' vegetables 7 carrot ', ' NFL 246 SHIRTS']
It is really close to be fine with it, just the trailing whitespace at the beginning of every element in the list.
What would be a good and efficient approach for my task? Stick with the splitting with re.split()
or building a pattern and use re.findall()
? Is my pattern good like I have done it or is it way too complicated?
Upvotes: 1
Views: 587
Reputation: 2045
By just adding twice (?:\s)
to your expression:
re.findall(r"(?:^|(?<=\d\.))(?:\s)([\sa-zA-Z0-9]+)(?:\s\d\.|$)", test_string)
The output is: ['Fruit 12 oranges', 'vegetables 7 carrot', 'NFL 246 SHIRTS']
Upvotes: 1