I have been researching a lot of questions about It on stackOverflow and google. But none of then solved my problem.
Let's say, I have an irregular length string (like a phone number or specific and territorial documents) for example:
docA="A123B456"
docB="A123B456CD"
docC="6CD"
I'm writing a function to print documents. But they don't have a definite pattern, my approach was to use a default variable using the most common pattern and give the responsibility of corner cases to the programmer.
e.g:
def printDoc(text, pattern="{}{}{}{}#{}{}{}-{}")
print(pattern.format(*text))
But It would be much more clean and explicit if there's a way to simplify the pattern like
def printDoc(text, pattern="{0:3}#{4:-1}-{-1}")
print(pattern.format(*text))
Then I could use It like:
printDoc(docA)
printDoc(docB)
printDoc(docC, "{0:1}-{2}")
But It's not a valid syntax. Is there a way of doing this properly?
If my approach is wrong, is there a better way of doing this?
You could use regular expression to parse the indexes/slices from the format string and use those to index given text. You'd also have to remove the indeces from format string before using it with str.format. The only tricky part is actually getting format parameters out from text but if you consider eval acceptable you could do following:
import re
def printDoc(text, pattern="{0:3}#{4:-1}-{-1}"):
params = []
# Find occurrences of '{}' from format string and extract format parameter
for m in re.finditer(r'\{([-:\d]+)\}', pattern):
params.append(eval('text[{}]'.format(m.group(1))))
# Remove indeces from format string
pattern = re.sub(r'\{([-:\d]+)\}', '{}', pattern)
print(pattern.format(*params))
printDoc('A123B456')
Output:
A12#B45-6
Note that using eval is generally considered bad and unsafe practice. Although the potential risks are limited here because of restricted character set given to eval you might want to consider other alternatives unless you're the one who controls the format strings.
Related
Say let's say there's a string in python like
'f"{var_1} is the same as {var_2}"'
or something like
"{} is the same as {}".format(var_1, var_2)
Is there a way to count the number of insertion strings that exist in the string?
I'm trying to create a function that counts the number of insertions in a string. This is because I have code for generating a middle name and it could generate 2 or 1 middle name and just to keep the code consistent I'd rather it count the number of insertions exists in the string.
you could use a regular expression:
import re
s = 'f"{var_1} is the same as {var_2}"'
len(list(re.finditer(r'{.+?}', s)))
output:
2
For simple cases you can just count the number of open braces
nsubst = "{var_1} is the same as {var_2}".count("{")
for complex cases this however doesn't work and there is no easy solution as you need to do a full parser of format syntax or handle quite a few special cases (the problem are for example escaped braces or nested field substitution in field format specs). Moreover for f-strings you're allowed quite a big subset of valid python expressions as fields, including literal nested dictionaries and things are even more complex.
I would like to generate string matching my regexes using Python 3. For this I am using handy library called rstr.
My regexes:
^[abc]+.
[a-z]+
My task:
I must find a generic way, how to create string that would match both my regexes.
What I cannot do:
Modify both regexes or join them in any way. This I consider as ineffective solution, especially in the case if incompatible regexes:
import re
import rstr
regex1 = re.compile(r'^[abc]+.')
regex2 = re.compile(r'[a-z]+')
for index in range(0, 1000):
generated_string = rstr.xeger(regex1)
if re.fullmatch(regex2, generated_string):
break;
else:
raise Exception('Regexes are probably incompatibile.')
print('String matching both regexes is: {}'.format(generated_string))
Is there any workaround or any magical library that can handle this? Any insights appreciated.
Questions which are seemingly similar, but not helpful in any way:
Match a line with multiple regex using Python
Asker already has the string, which he just want to check against multiple regexes in the most elegant way. In my case we need to generate string in a smart way that would match regexes.
If you want really generic way, you can't really use brute force approach.
What you look for is create some kind of representation of regexp (as rstr does through call of sre_parse.py) and then calling some SMT solver to satisfy both criteria.
For Haskell there is https://github.com/audreyt/regex-genex which uses Yices SMT solver to do just that, but I doubt there is anything like this for Python. If I were you, I'd bite a bullet and call it as external program from your python program.
I don't know if there is something that can fulfill your needs much smother.
But I would do it something like (as you've done it already):
Create a Regex object with the re.compile() function.
Generate String based on 1st regex.
Pass the string you've got into the 2nd regex object using search() method.
If that passes... your done, string passed both regexs.
Maybe you can create a function and pass both regexes as parameters and test "2 by 2" using the same logic.
And then if you have 8 regexes to match...
Just do:
call (regex1, regex2)
call (regex2, regex3)
call (regex4, regex5)
...
I solved this using a little alternative approach. Notice second regex is basically insurance so only lowercase letters are generated in our new string.
I used Google's python package sre_yield which allows charset limitation. Package is also available on PyPi. My code:
import sre_yield
import string
sre_yield.AllStrings(r'^[abc]+.', charset=string.ascii_lowercase)[0]
# returns `aa`
Here is my code :
l = "1.3E-2 2.5E+1"
parser = Word(alphanums + '+-.')
grammar = delimitedList(parser,delim='\t ')
print(grammar.parseString(l))
It returns :
['1.3E-2']
Obiously, I want all both values, not a single one, any idea what is going on ?
As #dawg explains, delimitedList is intended for cases where you have an expression with separating non-whitespace delimiters, typically commas. Pyparsing implicitly skips over whitespace, so in the pyparsing world, what you are really seeing is not a delimitedList, but OneOrMore(realnumber). Also, parseString internally calls str.expandtabs on the provided input string, unless you use the parseWithTabs=True argument. Expanding tabs to spaces helps preserve columnar alignment of data when it is in tabular form, and when I originally wrote pyparsing, this was a prevalent use case.
If you have control over this data, then you might want to use a different delimiter than <TAB>, perhaps commas or semicolons. If you are stuck with this format, but determined to use pyparsing, then use OneOrMore.
As you move forward, you will also want to be more precise about the expressions you define and the variable names that you use. The name "parser" is not very informative, and the pattern of Word(alphanums+'+-.') will match a lot of things besides valid real values in scientific notation. I understand if you are just trying to get anything working, this is a reasonable first cut, and you can come back and tune it once you get something going. If in fact you are going to be parsing real numbers, here is an expression that might be useful:
realnum = Regex(r'[+-]?\d+\.\d*([eE][+-]?\d+)?').setParseAction(lambda t: float(t[0]))
Then you can define your grammar as "OneOrMore(realnum)", which is also a lot more self-explanatory. And the parse action will convert your strings to floats at parse time, which will save you step later when actually working with the parsed values.
Good luck!
Works if you switch to raw strings:
l = r"1.3E-2\t2.5E+1"
parser = Word(alphanums + '+-.')
grammar = delimitedList(parser, delim=r'\t')
print(grammar.parseString(l))
Prints:
['1.3E-2', '2.5E+1']
In general, delimitedList works with something like PDPDP where P is the parse target and D is the delimter or delimiting sequence.
You have delim='\t '. That specifically is a delimiter of 1 tab followed by 1 space; it is not either tab or space.
I am trying to match a string with a regular expression but it is not working.
What I am trying to do is simple, it is the typical situation when an user intruduces a range of pages, or single pages. I am reading the string and checking if it is correct or not.
Expressions I am expecting, for a range of pages are like: 1-3, 5-6, 12-67
Expressions I am expecting, for single pages are like: 1,5,6,9,10,12
This is what I have done so far:
pagesOption1 = re.compile(r'\b\d\-\d{1,10}\b')
pagesOption2 = re.compile(r'\b\d\,{1,10}\b')
Seems like the first expression works, but not the second.
And, would it be possible to merge both of them in one single regular expression?, In a way that, if the user introduces either something like 1-2, 7-10 or something like 3,5,6,7 the expression will be recogniced as good.
Simpler is better
Matching the entire input isn't simple, as the proposed solutions show, at least it is not as simple as it could/should be. Will become read only very quickly and probably be scrapped by anyone that isn't regex savvy when they need to modify it with a simpler more explicit solution.
Simplest
First parse the entire string and .split(","); into individual data entries, you will need these anyway to process. You have to do this anyway to parse out the useable numbers.
Then the test becomes a very simple, test.
^(\d+)(?:-\(d+))?$
It says, that there the string must start with one or more digits and be followed by optionally a single - and one or more digits and then the string must end.
This makes your logic as simple and maintainable as possible. You also get the benefit of knowing exactly what part of the input is wrong and why so you can report it back to the user.
The capturing groups are there because you are going to need the input parsed out to actually use it anyway, this way you get the numbers if they match without having to add more code to parse them again anyway.
This regex should work -
^(?:(\d+\-\d+)|(\d+))(?:\,[ ]*(?:(\d+\-\d+)|(\d+)))*$
Demo here
Testing this -
>>> test_vals = [
'1-3, 5-6, 12-67',
'1,5,6,9,10,12',
'1-3,1,2,4',
'abcd',
]
>>> regex = re.compile(r'^(?:(\d+\-\d+)|(\d+))(?:\,[ ]*(?:(\d+\-\d+)|(\d+)))*$')
>>> for val in test_vals:
print val
if regex.match(val) == None:
print "Fail"
else:
print "Pass"
1-3, 5-6, 12-67
Pass
1,5,6,9,10,12
Pass
1-3,1,2,4.5
Fail
abcd
Fail
I'm fairly new to Python, and am writing a series of script to convert between some proprietary markup formats. I'm iterating line by line over files and then basically doing a large number (100-200) of substitutions that basically fall into 4 categories:
line = line.replace("-","<EMDASH>") # Replace single character with tag
line = line.replace("<\\#>","#") # tag with single character
line = line.replace("<\\n>","") # remove tag
line = line.replace("\xe1","•") # replace non-ascii character with entity
the str.replace() function seems to be pretty efficient (fairly low in the numbers when I examine profiling output), but is there a better way to do this? I've seen the re.sub() method with a function as an argument, but am unsure if this would be better? I guess it depends on what kind of optimizations Python does internally. Thought I would ask for some advice before creating a large dict that might not be very helpful!
Additionally I do some parsing of tags (that look somewhat like HTML, but are not HTML). I identify tags like this:
m = re.findall('(<[^>]+>)',line)
And then do ~100 search/replaces (mostly removing matches) within the matched tags as well, e.g.:
m = re.findall('(<[^>]+>)',line)
for tag in m:
tag_new = re.sub("\*t\([^\)]*\)","",tag)
tag_new = re.sub("\*p\([^\)]*\)","",tag_new)
# do many more searches...
if tag != tag_new:
line = line.replace(tag,tag_new,1) # potentially problematic
Any thoughts of efficiency here?
Thanks!
str.replace() is more efficient if you're going to do basic search and replaces, and re.sub is (obviously) more efficient if you need complex pattern matching (because otherwise you'd have to use str.replace several times).
I'd recommend you use a combination of both. If you have several patterns that all get replaced by one thing, use re.sub. If you just have some cases where you just need to replace one specific tag with another, use str.replace.
You can also improve efficiency by using larger strings (call re.sub once instead of once for each line). Increases memory use, but shouldn't be a problem unless the file is HUGE, but also improves execution time.
If you don't actually need the regex and are just doing literal replacing, string.replace() will almost certainly be faster. But even so, your bottleneck here will be file input/output, not string manipulation.
The best solution though would probably be to use cStringIO
Depending on the ratio of relevant-to-not-relevant portions of the text you're operating on (and whether or not the parts each substitution operates on overlap), it might be more efficient to try to break down the input into tokens and work on each token individually.
Since each replace() in your current implementation has to examine the entire input string, that can be slow. If you instead broke down that stream into something like...
[<normal text>, <tag>, <tag>, <normal text>, <tag>, <normal text>]
# from an original "<normal text><tag><tag><normal text><tag><normal text>"
...then you could simply look to see if a given token is a tag, and replace it in the list (and then ''.join() at the end).
You can pass a function object to re.sub instead of a substitution string, it takes the match object and returns the substitution, so for example
>>> r = re.compile(r'<(\w+)>|(-)')
>>> r.sub(lambda m: '(%s)' % (m.group(1) if m.group(1) else 'emdash'), '<atag>-<anothertag>')
'(atag)(emdash)(anothertag)'
Of course you can use a more complex function object, this lambda is just an example.
Using a single regex that does all the substitution should be slightly faster than iterating the string many times, but if a lot of substitutions are perfomed the overhead of calling the function object that computes the substitution may be significant.