How to extract a substring from a string in Python 3 - python

I am trying to pull a substring out of a function result, but I'm having trouble figuring out the best way to strip the necessary string out using Python.
Output Example:
[<THIS STRING-STRING-STRING THAT THESE THOSE>]
In this example, I would like to grab "STRING-STRING-STRING" and throw away all the rest of the output. In this example, "[<THIS " &" THAT THESE THOSE>]" are static.

Many many ways to solve this. Here are two examples:
First one is a simple replacement of your unwanted characters.
targetstring = '[<THIS STRING-STRING-STRING THAT THESE THOSE>]'
#ALTERNATIVE 1
newstring = targetstring.replace(r" THAT THESE THOSE>]", '').replace(r"[<THIS ", '')
print(newstring)
and this drops everything except your target pattern:
#ALTERNATIVE 2
match = "STRING-STRING-STRING"
start = targetstring.find(match)
stop = len(match)
targetstring[start:start+stop]
These can be shortened but thought it might be useful for OP to have them written out.
I found this extremely useful, might be of help to you as well: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001721.htm

If by '"[<THIS " &" THAT THESE THOSE>]" are static' you mean that they are always the exact same string, then:
s = "[<THIS STRING-STRING-STRING THAT THESE THOSE>]"
before = len("[<THIS ")
after = len(" THAT THESE THOSE>]")
s[before:-after]
# 'STRING-STRING-STRING'

Like so (as long as the postition of the characters in the string doesn't change):
myString = "[<THIS STRING-STRING-STRING THAT THESE THOSE>]"
myString = myString[7:27]

Another alternative method;
import re
my_str = "[<THIS STRING-STRING-STRING THAT THESE THOSE>]"
string_pos = [(s.start(), s.end()) for s in list(re.finditer('STRING-STRING-STRING', my_str))]
start, end = string_pos[0]
print(my_str[start: end + 1])
STRING-STRING-STRING
If the STRING-STRING-STRING occurs multiple times in the string, start and end indexes of the each occurrences will be given as tuples in string_pos.

Related

Complex string filtering with python

I have a long string that is a phylogenetic tree and I want to do a very specific filtering.
(Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0:0.0726396855636,Aar#AA_maker7399_1:0.137507902808,((Spa#Tp2g18720:0.0318934795022,Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c:0.0273465005242):9.05326020871e-05,(((Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1:0.0332592496158,((Aly#AL8G21130_t1:0.0328569260951,Ath#AT5G48370_1:0.0391706378372):0.0205924636564,(Chi#CARHR183840_1:0.0954469923893,Cru#Carubv10026342m:0.0570981548016):0.00998579652059):0.0150356382287):0.0340484449097,(((Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100:0.00823215335663,Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0085462978729):0.0144626717872,Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0225079453622):0.0206478928557,Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1:0.048590776459):0.0372829371381):0.00859075940423,(Esa#Thhalv10004228m:0.0378509854703,Aal#Aa_G102140_t1:0.0712272454125):1.00000050003e-06):0.00328120860999):0.0129090235079):0.0129090235079;
Basically every x#y is a species#gene_id information. What I am trying to do is trimming this down so that I will only have x instead of x#y.
(Esy, Aar,(Spa,Cpl))...
I tried splitting the string first but the problem is string has different 'split points' for what I want to achieve i.e. some parts x#y is ending with a , and others with a ). I searched for a solution and saw regular expression operations, but I am new to Python and I couldn't be sure if that is what I should be focusing on. I also thought about strip() but it seems like I need to specify the characters to be stripped for this.
Main problem is there is no 'pattern' for me to tell Python to follow. Only thing is that all species ids are 3 letters and they are before an # character.
Is there a method that can do what I want? I will be really glad if you can help me out with my problem. Thanks in advance.
Give this a try:
import re:
pat = re.compile(r'(\w{3})#')
txt = "(Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0:0.0726396855636,Aar#AA_maker7399_1:0.137507902808,((Spa#Tp2g18720:0.0318934795022,Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c:0.0273465005242):9.05326020871e-05,(((Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1:0.0332592496158,((Aly#AL8G21130_t1:0.0328569260951,Ath#AT5G48370_1:0.0391706378372):0.0205924636564,(Chi#CARHR183840_1:0.0954469923893,Cru#Carubv10026342m:0.0570981548016):0.00998579652059):0.0150356382287):0.0340484449097,(((Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100:0.00823215335663,Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0085462978729):0.0144626717872,Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0225079453622):0.0206478928557,Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1:0.048590776459):0.0372829371381):0.00859075940423,(Esa#Thhalv10004228m:0.0378509854703,Aal#Aa_G102140_t1:0.0712272454125):1.00000050003e-06):0.00328120860999):0.0129090235079):0.0129090235079;"
pat.findall(t)
Result:
['Esy', 'Aar', 'Spa', 'Cpl', 'Bst', 'Aly', 'Ath', 'Chi', 'Cru', 'Hco', 'Hlo', 'Hla', 'Hse', 'Esa', 'Aal']
If you need the structure intact, we can try to remove the unnecessary parts instead:
pat = re.compile(r'(#|:)[^/),]*')
pat.sub('',t).replace(',', ', ')
Result:
'(Esy, Aar, ((Spa, Cpl), (((Bst, ((Aly, Ath), (Chi, Cru))), (((Hco, Hlo), Hla), Hse)), (Esa, Aal))))'
Regex demo
How about this kind of function:
def parse_string(string):
new_string = ''
skip = False
for char in string:
if char == '#':
skip = True
if char == ',':
skip = False
if not skip or char in ['(', ')']:
new_string += char
return new_string
Calling it on your string:
string = '(Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0:0.0726396855636,Aar#AA_maker7399_1:0.137507902808,((Spa#Tp2g18720:0.0318934795022,Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c:0.0273465005242):9.05326020871e-05,(((Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1:0.0332592496158,((Aly#AL8G21130_t1:0.0328569260951,Ath#AT5G48370_1:0.0391706378372):0.0205924636564,(Chi#CARHR183840_1:0.0954469923893,Cru#Carubv10026342m:0.0570981548016):0.00998579652059):0.0150356382287):0.0340484449097,(((Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100:0.00823215335663,Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0085462978729):0.0144626717872,Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0225079453622):0.0206478928557,Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1:0.048590776459):0.0372829371381):0.00859075940423,(Esa#Thhalv10004228m:0.0378509854703,Aal#Aa_G102140_t1:0.0712272454125):1.00000050003e-06):0.00328120860999):0.0129090235079):0.0129090235079;'
parse_string(string)
> '(Esy,Aar,((Spa,Cpl),(((Bst,((Aly,Ath),(Chi,Cru))),(((Hco,Hlo),Hla),Hse)),(Esa,Aal))))'
you can use regex:
import re
s = "(Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0:0.0726396855636,Aar#AA_maker7399_1:0.137507902808,((Spa#Tp2g18720:0.0318934795022,Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c:0.0273465005242):9.05326020871e-05,(((Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1:0.0332592496158,((Aly#AL8G21130_t1:0.0328569260951,Ath#AT5G48370_1:0.0391706378372):0.0205924636564,(Chi#CARHR183840_1:0.0954469923893,Cru#Carubv10026342m:0.0570981548016):0.00998579652059):0.0150356382287):0.0340484449097,(((Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100:0.00823215335663,Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0085462978729):0.0144626717872,Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0225079453622):0.0206478928557,Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1:0.048590776459):0.0372829371381):0.00859075940423,(Esa#Thhalv10004228m:0.0378509854703,Aal#Aa_G102140_t1:0.0712272454125):1.00000050003e-06):0.00328120860999):0.0129090235079):0.0129090235079;"
p = "...?(?=#)|\(|\)"
result = re.findall(p, s)
and you have your result as a list, so you can make it string or do anything with it
for explaining what is happening :
p is regular expression pattern
so in this pattern:
. means matching any word
...?(?=#) means match any word until I get to a word ? wich ? is #, so this whole pattern means that you get any three words before #
| is or statement, I used it here to find another pattern
and the rest of them is to find ) and (
Try this regex if you need the brackets in the output:
import re
regex = r"#[A-Za-z0-9_\.:]+|[0-9:\.;e-]+"
phylogenetic_tree = "(Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0:0.0726396855636,Aar#AA_maker7399_1:0.137507902808,((Spa#Tp2g18720:0.0318934795022,Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c:0.0273465005242):9.05326020871e-05,(((Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1:0.0332592496158,((Aly#AL8G21130_t1:0.0328569260951,Ath#AT5G48370_1:0.0391706378372):0.0205924636564,(Chi#CARHR183840_1:0.0954469923893,Cru#Carubv10026342m:0.0570981548016):0.00998579652059):0.0150356382287):0.0340484449097,(((Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100:0.00823215335663,Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0085462978729):0.0144626717872,Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0225079453622):0.0206478928557,Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1:0.048590776459):0.0372829371381):0.00859075940423,(Esa#Thhalv10004228m:0.0378509854703,Aal#Aa_G102140_t1:0.0712272454125):1.00000050003e-06):0.00328120860999):0.0129090235079):0.0129090235079;"
print(re.sub(regex,"",phylogenetic_tree))
Output:
(Esy,Aar,((Spa,Cpl),(((Bst,((Aly,Ath),(Chi,Cru))),(((Hco,Hlo),Hla),Hs)),(Esa,Aal))))
Because you are trying to parse a phylogenetic tree, I highly suggest to let BioPython do the heavy lifting for you.
You can easily parse and display a phylogenetic with Bio.Phylo. Then it is just iterating over all tree elements and splitting the names at the 'at'-sign.
Because Phylo expects the input to be in a file, we create an in-memory file-like object with io.StringIO. Getting the complete tree is then as easy as
Phylo.read(io.StringIO(s), 'newick')
In order to check if the parsed tree looks sane, I print it once with print(tree).
Now we want to change all node names that contain a '#'. With tree.find_elements we get access to all nodes. Some nodes don't have a name and some might not contain a '#'. So to be extra careful, we first check if n.name and '#' in n.name. Only then do we split each node's name at the '#' and take just the first part (index 0) of it:
n.name = n.name.split('#')[0]
In order to recreate the initial string representation, we use Phylo.write:
out = io.StringIO()
Phylo.write(tree, out, "newick")
print(out.getvalue())
Again, write wants to get a file argument - if we just want to get a string, we can use a StringIO object again.
Full code:
import io
from Bio import Phylo
if __name__ == '__main__':
s = '(Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0:0.0726396855636,Aar#AA_maker7399_1:0.137507902808,((Spa#Tp2g18720:0.0318934795022,Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c:0.0273465005242):9.05326020871e-05,(((Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1:0.0332592496158,((Aly#AL8G21130_t1:0.0328569260951,Ath#AT5G48370_1:0.0391706378372):0.0205924636564,(Chi#CARHR183840_1:0.0954469923893,Cru#Carubv10026342m:0.0570981548016):0.00998579652059):0.0150356382287):0.0340484449097,(((Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100:0.00823215335663,Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0085462978729):0.0144626717872,Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0225079453622):0.0206478928557,Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1:0.048590776459):0.0372829371381):0.00859075940423,(Esa#Thhalv10004228m:0.0378509854703,Aal#Aa_G102140_t1:0.0712272454125):1.00000050003e-06):0.00328120860999):0.0129090235079):0.0129090235079;'
tree = Phylo.read(io.StringIO(s), 'newick')
print(' before '.center(20, '='))
print(tree)
for n in tree.find_elements():
if n.name and '#' in n.name:
n.name = n.name.split('#')[0]
print(' result '.center(20, '='))
out = io.StringIO()
Phylo.write(tree, out, "newick")
print(out.getvalue())
Output:
====== before ======
Tree(rooted=False, weight=1.0)
Clade(branch_length=0.0129090235079)
Clade(branch_length=0.0726396855636, name='Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0')
Clade(branch_length=0.137507902808, name='Aar#AA_maker7399_1')
Clade(branch_length=0.0129090235079)
Clade(branch_length=9.05326020871e-05)
Clade(branch_length=0.0318934795022, name='Spa#Tp2g18720')
Clade(branch_length=0.0273465005242, name='Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c')
Clade(branch_length=0.00328120860999)
Clade(branch_length=0.00859075940423)
Clade(branch_length=0.0340484449097)
Clade(branch_length=0.0332592496158, name='Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1')
Clade(branch_length=0.0150356382287)
Clade(branch_length=0.0205924636564)
Clade(branch_length=0.0328569260951, name='Aly#AL8G21130_t1')
Clade(branch_length=0.0391706378372, name='Ath#AT5G48370_1')
Clade(branch_length=0.00998579652059)
Clade(branch_length=0.0954469923893, name='Chi#CARHR183840_1')
Clade(branch_length=0.0570981548016, name='Cru#Carubv10026342m')
Clade(branch_length=0.0372829371381)
Clade(branch_length=0.0206478928557)
Clade(branch_length=0.0144626717872)
Clade(branch_length=0.00823215335663, name='Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100')
Clade(branch_length=0.0085462978729, name='Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1')
Clade(branch_length=0.0225079453622, name='Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1')
Clade(branch_length=0.048590776459, name='Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1')
Clade(branch_length=1.00000050003e-06)
Clade(branch_length=0.0378509854703, name='Esa#Thhalv10004228m')
Clade(branch_length=0.0712272454125, name='Aal#Aa_G102140_t1')
==== result =====
(Esy:0.07264,Aar:0.13751,((Spa:0.03189,Cpl:0.02735):0.00009,(((Bst:0.03326,((Aly:0.03286,Ath:0.03917):0.02059,(Chi:0.09545,Cru:0.05710):0.00999):0.01504):0.03405,(((Hco:0.00823,Hlo:0.00855):0.01446,Hla:0.02251):0.02065,Hse:0.04859):0.03728):0.00859,(Esa:0.03785,Aal:0.07123):0.00000):0.00328):0.01291):0.01291;
The default format of Phylo uses less digits than in your original tree. In order to keep the numbers unchanged, just override the branch length format string with a '%s':
Phylo.write(tree, out, "newick", format_branch_length="%s")
Parsing code can be hard to follow. Tatsu lets you write readable parsing code by combining grammars and python:
text = "(Esy#ESY15_g64743_DN3_SP7_c0:0.0726396855636,Aar#AA_maker7399_1:0.137507902808,((Spa#Tp2g18720:0.0318934795022,Cpl#CP2_g48793_DN3_SP8_c:0.0273465005242):9.05326020871e-05,(((Bst#Bostr_13083s0053_1:0.0332592496158,((Aly#AL8G21130_t1:0.0328569260951,Ath#AT5G48370_1:0.0391706378372):0.0205924636564,(Chi#CARHR183840_1:0.0954469923893,Cru#Carubv10026342m:0.0570981548016):0.00998579652059):0.0150356382287):0.0340484449097,(((Hco#scaff1034_g23864_DN3_SP8_c_TE35_CDS100:0.00823215335663,Hlo#DN13684_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0085462978729):0.0144626717872,Hla#DN22821_c0_g1_i1_p1:0.0225079453622):0.0206478928557,Hse#DN23412_c0_g1_i3_p1:0.048590776459):0.0372829371381):0.00859075940423,(Esa#Thhalv10004228m:0.0378509854703,Aal#Aa_G102140_t1:0.0712272454125):1.00000050003e-06):0.00328120860999):0.0129090235079):0.0129090235079;"
import sys
import tatsu
grammar = """
start = things ';'
;
things = thing [ ',' things ]
;
thing = x '#' y ':' number
| '(' things ')' ':' number
;
x = /\w+/
;
y = /\w+/
;
number = /[+-]?\d+\.?\d*(e?[+-]?\d*)/
;
"""
class Semantics:
def x(self, ast):
# the method name matches the rule name
print('X =', ast)
parser = tatsu.compile(grammar, semantics=Semantics())
parser.parse(text)

Replace only the ending of a string

It irks me not to be able to do the following in a single line. I've a feeling that it can be done through list comprehension, but how?
given_string = "first.second.third.None"
string_splitted = given_string.split('.')
string_splitted[-1] = "fourth"
given_string = ".".join(string_splitted)
Please note that the number of dots (.) in the given_string is constant (3). So i always want to replace the fourth fragment of the string.
It seems like you should be able to do this without splitting into an array. Find the last . and slice to there:
> given_string = "first.second.third.None"
> given_string[:given_string.rfind('.')] + '.fourth'
'first.second.third.fourth'
You could try this:
given_string = "first.second.third.None"
given_string = ".".join(given_string.split('.')[:-1] + ["fourth"])
print(given_string)
Output:
first.second.third.fourth
Try this one liner:-
print (".".join(given_string.split(".")[:-1]+["Fourth"]))
Output:
first.second.third.Fourth
You could use rsplit. This would work no matter how many dots precede the last split
given_string = "first.second.third.None"
string_splitted = given_string.rsplit('.', 1)[0] + '.fourth'
print(string_splitted)
first.second.third.fourth
my_string = "first.second.third.None"
my_sub = re.sub(r'((\w+\.){3})(\w+)', r'\1fourth', my_string)
print(my_sub)
first.second.third.fourth
A good explanation of this style is here: How to find and replace nth occurence of word in a sentence using python regular expression?

Excluding a specific string of characters in a str()-function

A small issue I've encountered during coding.
I'm looking to print out the name of a .txt file.
For example, the file is named: verdata_florida.txt, or verdata_newyork.txt
How can I exclude .txt and verdata_, but keep the string between? It must work for any number of characters, but .txt and verdata_ must be excluded.
This is where I am so far, I've already defined filename to be input()
print("Average TAM at", str(filename[8:**????**]), "is higher than ")
3 ways of doing it:
using str.split twice:
>>> "verdata_florida.txt".split("_")[1].split(".")[0]
'florida'
using str.partition twice (you won't get an exception if the format doesn't match, and probably faster too):
>>> "verdata_florida.txt".partition("_")[2].partition(".")[0]
'florida'
using re, keeping only center part:
>>> import re
>>> re.sub(".*_(.*)\..*",r"\1","verdata_florida.txt")
'florida'
all those above must be tuned if _ and . appear multiple times (must we keep the longest or the shortest string)
EDIT: In your case, though, prefixes & suffixes seem fixed. In that case, just use str.replace twice:
>>> "verdata_florida.txt".replace("verdata_","").replace(".txt","")
'florida'
Assuming you want it to split on the first _ and the last . you can use slicing and the index and rindex functions to get this done. These functions will search for the first occurrence of the substring in the parenthesis and return the index number. If no substring is found, they will throw a ValueError. If the search is desired, but not the ValueError, you can also use find and rfind, which do the same thing but always return -1 if no match is found.
s = 'verdata_new_hampshire.txt'
s_trunc = s[s.index('_') + 1: s.rindex('.')] # or s[s.find('_') + 1: s.rfind('.')]
print(s_trunc) # new_hampshire
Of course, if you are always going to exclude verdata_ and .txt you could always hardcode the slice as well.
print(s[8:-4]) # new_hampshire
You can leverage str.split() on strings. For example:
s = 'verdata_newyork.txt'
s.split('verdata_')
# ['', 'florida.txt']
s.split('verdata_')[1]
# 'florida.txt'
s.split('verdata_')[1].split('.txt')
['florida', '']
s.split('verdata_')[1].split('.txt')[0]
# 'florida'
You can just split string by dot and underscore like this:
string filename = "verdata_prague.txt";
string name = filename.split("."); //verdata_prague
name = name[0].split("_")[1]; //prague
or by replace function:
string filename = "verdata_prague.txt";
string name = filename.replace(".txt",""); //verdata_prague
name = name[0].replace("verdata_","")[1]; //prague

Another alternating-case in-a-string in Python 3.+

I'm very new to Python and am trying to understand how to manipulate strings.
What I want to do is change a string by removing the spaces and alternating the case from upper to lower, IE "This is harder than I thought it would be" to "ThIsIsHaRdErThAnItHoUgHtItWoUlDbE"
I've cobbled together a code to remove the spaces (heavily borrowed from here):
string1 = input("Ask user for something.")
nospace = ""
for a in string1:
if a == " ":
pass
else:
nospace=nospace+a
... but just can't get my head around the caps/lower case part. There are several similar issues on this site and I've tried amending a few of them, with no joy. I realise I need to define a range and iterate through it, but that's where I draw a blank.
for c in nospace[::]:
d = ""
c = nospace[:1].lower()
d = d + c
c = nospace[:1].upper
print d
All I am getting is a column of V's. I'm obviously getting this very wrong. Please can someone advise where? Thanks in advance.
Here is a cutesie way to do this:
>>> s = "This is harder than I thought it would be"
>>> from itertools import cycle
>>> funcs = cycle([str.upper, str.lower])
>>> ''.join(next(funcs)(c) for c in s if c != ' ')
'ThIsIsHaRdErThAnItHoUgHtItWoUlDbE'
>>>
Or, as suggested by Moses in the comments, you can use str.isspace, which will take care of not just a single space ' '
>>> ''.join(next(funcs)(c) for c in s if not c.isspace())
'ThIsIsHaRdErThAnItHoUgHtItWoUlDbE'
This approach only does a single pass on the string. Although, a two-pass method is likely performant enough.
Now, if you were starting with a nospace string, the best way is to convert to some mutable type (e.g. a list) and use slice-assignment notation. It's a little bit inefficient because it builds intermediate data structures, but slicing is fast in Python, so it may be quite performant. You have to ''.join at the end, to bring it back to a string:
>>> nospace
'ThisisharderthanIthoughtitwouldbe'
>>> nospace = list(nospace)
>>> nospace[0::2] = map(str.upper, nospace[0::2])
>>> nospace[1::2] = map(str.lower, nospace[1::2])
>>> ''.join(nospace)
'ThIsIsHaRdErThAnItHoUgHtItWoUlDbE'
>>>
You're trying to do everything at once. Don't. Break your program into steps.
Read the string.
Remove the spaces from the string (as #A.Sherif just demonstrated here)
Go over the string character by character. If the character is in an odd position, convert it to uppercase. Otherwise, convert to lowercase.
So your 2nd loop is where you're breaking it, because the original list isn't being shortened, the c=nospace[:1] grabs the first character of the string and that's the only character that's ever printed. So a solution would be as follows.
string1 = str(input("Ask user for something."))
nospace = ''.join(string1.split(' '))
for i in range(0, len(nospace)):
if i % 2 == 0:
print(nospace[i].upper(), end="")
else:
print(nospace[i].lower(), end="")
Could also replace the if/else statement with a ternary opperator.
for i in range(0, len(nospace)):
print(nospace[i].upper() if (i % 2 == 0) else nospace[i].lower(), end='')
Final way using enumerate as commented about
for i, c in enumerate(nospace):
print(c.upper() if (i % 2 == 0) else c.lower(), end='')

python regex for repeating string

I am wanting to verify and then parse this string (in quotes):
string = "start: c12354, c3456, 34526; other stuff that I don't care about"
//Note that some codes begin with 'c'
I would like to verify that the string starts with 'start:' and ends with ';'
Afterward, I would like to have a regex parse out the strings. I tried the following python re code:
regx = r"start: (c?[0-9]+,?)+;"
reg = re.compile(regx)
matched = reg.search(string)
print ' matched.groups()', matched.groups()
I have tried different variations but I can either get the first or the last code but not a list of all three.
Or should I abandon using a regex?
EDIT: updated to reflect part of the problem space I neglected and fixed string difference.
Thanks for all the suggestions - in such a short time.
In Python, this isn’t possible with a single regular expression: each capture of a group overrides the last capture of that same group (in .NET, this would actually be possible since the engine distinguishes between captures and groups).
Your easiest solution is to first extract the part between start: and ; and then using a regular expression to return all matches, not just a single match, using re.findall('c?[0-9]+', text).
You could use the standard string tools, which are pretty much always more readable.
s = "start: c12354, c3456, 34526;"
s.startswith("start:") # returns a boolean if it starts with this string
s.endswith(";") # returns a boolean if it ends with this string
s[6:-1].split(', ') # will give you a list of tokens separated by the string ", "
This can be done (pretty elegantly) with a tool like Pyparsing:
from pyparsing import Group, Literal, Optional, Word
import string
code = Group(Optional(Literal("c"), default='') + Word(string.digits) + Optional(Literal(","), default=''))
parser = Literal("start:") + OneOrMore(code) + Literal(";")
# Read lines from file:
with open('lines.txt', 'r') as f:
for line in f:
try:
result = parser.parseString(line)
codes = [c[1] for c in result[1:-1]]
# Do something with teh codez...
except ParseException exc:
# Oh noes: string doesn't match!
continue
Cleaner than a regular expression, returns a list of codes (no need to string.split), and ignores any extra characters in the line, just like your example.
import re
sstr = re.compile(r'start:([^;]*);')
slst = re.compile(r'(?:c?)(\d+)')
mystr = "start: c12354, c3456, 34526; other stuff that I don't care about"
match = re.match(sstr, mystr)
if match:
res = re.findall(slst, match.group(0))
results in
['12354', '3456', '34526']

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