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Is there an R or Python function for separating information in non-delimited strings, where the information varies?

I am currently cleaning up a messy data sheet in which information is given in one excel cell where the different characteristics are not delimited (no comma, spaces are random).
Thus, my problem is to separate the different information without a delimitation I could use in my code (can't use a split command)
I assume that I need to include some characteristics of each part of information, such that the corresponding characteristic is recognized. However, I don't have a clue how to do that since I am quite new to Python and I only worked with R in the framework of regression models and other statistical analysis.
Short data example:
INPUT:
"WMIN CBOND12/05/2022 23554132121"
or
"WalMaInCBND 12/05/2022-23554132121"
or
"WalmartI CorpBond12/05/2022|23554132121"
EXPECTED OUTPUT:
"Walmart Inc.", "Corporate Bond", "12/05/2022", "23554132121"
So each of the "x" should be classified in a new column with the corresponding header (Company, Security, Maturity, Account Number)
As you can see the input varies randomly but I want to have the same output for each of the three inputs given above (I have over 200k data points with different companies, securities etc.)
First Problem is how to separate the information effectively without being able to use a systematic pattern.
Second Problem (lower priority) is how to identify the company without setting up a dictionary with 50 different inputs for 50k companies.
Thanks for your help!

I recommend to first introduce useful seperators where possible and construct a dictionary of replacements for processing with regular expressions.
import re
s = 'WMIN CBOND12/05/2022 23554132121'
# CAREFUL this not a real date regex, this should just
# illustrate the principle of regex
# see https://stackoverflow.com/a/15504877/5665958 for
# a good US date regex
date_re = re.compile('([0-9]{2}/[0-9]{2}/[0-9]{4})')
# prepend a whitespace before the date
# this is achieved by searching the date within the string
# and replacing it with itself with a prepended whitespace
# /1 means "insert the first capture group", which in our
# case is the date
s = re.sub(date_re, r' \1', s)
# split by one or more whitespaces and insert
# a seperator (';') to make working with the string
# easier
s = ';'.join(s.split())
# build a dictionary of replacements
replacements = {
'WMIN': 'Walmart Inc.',
'CBOND': 'Corporate Bond',
}
# for each replacement apply subsitution
# a better, but more replicated solution for
# this is given here:
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/15175239/5665958
for pattern, r in replacements.items():
s = re.sub(pattern, r, s)
# use our custom separator to split the parts
out = s.split(';')
print(out)

Using python and regular expressions:
import re
def make_filter(pattern):
pattern = re.compile(pattern)
def filter(s):
filtered = pattern.match(s)
return filtered.group(1), filtered.group(2), filtered.group(3), filtered.group(4)
return filter
filter = make_filter("^([a-zA-Z]+)\s([a-zA-Z]+)(\d+/\d+/\d+)\s(\d+)$")
filter("WMIN CBOND12/05/2022 23554132121")
The make_filter function is just an utility to allow you to modify the pattern. It returns a function that will filter the output according to that pattern. I use it with the "^([a-zA-Z]+)\s([a-zA-Z]+)(\d+/\d+/\d+)\s(\d+)$" pattern that considers some text, an space, some text, a date, an space, and a number. If you want to kodify this pattern provide more info about it. The output will be ("WMIN", "CBOND", "12/05/2022", "23554132121").

welcome! Yeah, we would definitely need to see more examples and regex seems to be the way to go... but since there seems to be no structure, I think it's better to think of this as seperate steps.
We KNOW there's a date which is (X)X/(X)X/XXXX (ie. one or two digit day, one or two digit month, four digit year, maybe with or without the slashes, right?) and after that there's numbers. So solve that part first, leaving only the first two categories. That's actually the easy part :) but don't lose heart!
if these two categories might not have ANY delimiter (for example WMINCBOND 12/05/202223554132121, or delimiters are not always delimiters for example IMAGINARY COMPANY X CBOND, then you're in deep trouble. :) BUT this is what we can do:
Gather a list of all the codes (hopefully you have that).
use str_detect() on each code and see if you can recognize the exact string in any of the dataset (if you do have the codes lemme know I'll write the code to do this part).
What's left after identifying the code will be the CBOND, whatever that is... so do that part last... what's left of the string will be that. Alternatively, you can use the same str_detect() if you have a list of whatever CBOND stuff is.
ONLY AFTER YOU'VE IDENTIFIED EVERYTHING, you can then replace the codes for what they stand for.
If you have the code-list let me know and I'll post the code.

edit
s = c("WMIN CBOND12/05/2022 23554132121",
"WalMaInCBND 12/05/2022-23554132121",
"WalmartI CorpBond12/05/2022|23554132121")
ID = gsub("([a-zA-Z]+).*","\\1",s)
ID2 = gsub(".* ([a-zA-Z]+).*","\\1",s)
date = gsub("[a-zA-Z ]+(\\d+\\/\\d+\\/\\d+).*","\\1",s)
num = gsub("^.*[^0-9](.*$)","\\1",s)
data.frame(ID=ID,ID2=ID2,date=date,num=num,stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
ID ID2 date num
1 WMIN CBOND 12/05/2022 23554132121
2 WalMaInCBND WalMaInCBND 12/05/2022-23554132121 12/05/2022 23554132121
3 WalmartI CorpBond 12/05/2022 23554132121
Works for cases 1 and 3 but I haven't figured out a logic for the second case, how can we know where to split the string containing the company and security if they are not separated?

Substring with multiple instances of the same character

So I am using a Magtek USB reader that will read card information,
As of right now I can swipe a card and I get a long string of information that goes into a Tkinter Entry textbox that looks like this
%B8954756016548963^LAST/FIRST INITIAL^180912345678912345678901234?;8954756016548963=180912345678912345678901234?
All of the data has been randomized, but that's the format
I've got a tkinter button (it gets the text from the entry box in the format I included above and runs this)
def printCD(self):
print(self.carddata.get())
self.card_data_get = self.carddata.get()
self.creditnumber =
self.card_data_get[self.card_data_get.find("B")+1:
self.card_data_get.find("^")]
print(self.creditnumber)
print(self.card_data_get.count("^"))
This outputs:
%B8954756016548963^LAST/FIRST INITIAL^180912345678912345678901234?;8954756016548963=180912345678912345678901234?
8954756016548963
This yields no issues, but if I wanted to get the next two variables firstname, and lastname
I would need to reuse self.variable.find("^") because in the format it's used before LAST and after INITIAL
So far when I've tried to do this it hasn't been able to reuse "^"
Any takers on how I can split that string of text up into individual variables:
Card Number
First Name
Last Name
Expiration Date

Regex will work for this. I didn't capture everything because you didn't detail what's what but here's an example of capturing the name:
import re
data = "%B8954756016548963^LAST/FIRST INITIAL^180912345678912345678901234?;8954756016548963=180912345678912345678901234?"
matches = re.search(r"\^(?P<name>.+)\^", data)
print(matches.group('name'))
# LAST/FIRST INITIAL
If you aren't familiar with regex, here's a way of testing pattern matching: https://regex101.com/r/lAARCP/1 and an intro tutorial: https://regexone.com/
But basically, I'm searching for (one or more of anything with .+ between two carrots, ^).
Actually, since you mentioned having first and last separate, you'd use this regex:
\^(?P<last>.+)/(?P<first>.+)\^
This question may also interest you regarding finding something twice: Finding multiple occurrences of a string within a string in Python

If you find regex difficult you can divide the problem into smaller pieces and attack one at a time:
data = '%B8954756016548963^LAST/FIRST INITIAL^180912345678912345678901234?;8954756016548963=180912345678912345678901234?'
pieces = data.split('^') # Divide in pieces, one of which contains name
for piece in pieces:
if '/' in piece:
last, the_rest = piece.split('/')
first, initial = the_rest.split()
print('Name:', first, initial, last)
elif piece.startswith('%B'):
print('Card no:', piece[2:])

match hex string with list indice

I'm building a de-identify tool. It replaces all names by other names.
We got a report that <name>Peter</name> met <name>Jane</name> yesterday. <name>Peter</name> is suspicious.
outpout :
We got a report that <name>Billy</name> met <name>Elsa</name> yesterday. <name>Billy</name> is suspicious.
It can be done on multiple documents, and one name is always replaced by the same counterpart, so you can still understand who the text is talking about. BUT, all documents have an ID, referring to the person this file is about (I'm working with files in a public service) and only documents with the same people ID will be de-identified the same way, with the same names. (the goal is to watch evolution and people's history) This is a security measure, such as when I hand over the tool to a third party, I don't hand over the key to my own documents with it.
So the same input, with a different ID, produces :
We got a report that <name>Henry</name> met <name>Alicia</name> yesterday. <name>Henry</name> is suspicious.
Right now, I'm hashing each name with the document ID as a salt, I convert the hash to an integer, then subtract the length of the name list until I can request a name with that integer as an indice. But I feel like there should be a quicker/more straightforward approach ?
It's really more of an algorithmic question, but if it's of any relevance I'm working with python 2.7 Please request more explanation if needed. Thank you !
I hope it's clearer this way ô_o Sorry when you are neck-deep in your code you forget others need a bigger picture to understand how you got there.

As #LutzHorn pointed out, you could just use a dict to map real names to false ones.
You could also just do something like:
existing_names = []
for nameocurrence in original_text:
if not nameoccurence.name in existing_names:
nameoccurence.id = len(existing_names)
existing_names.append(nameoccurence.name)
else:
nameoccurence.id = existing_names.index(nameoccurence.name)
for idx, _ in enumerate(existing_names):
existing_names[idx] = gimme_random_name()

Try using a dictionary of names.
import re
names = {"Peter": "Billy", "Jane": "Elsa"}
for name in re.findall("<name>([a-zA-Z]+)</name>", s):
s = re.sub("<name>" + name + "</name>", "<name>"+ names[name] + "</name>", s)
print(s)
Output:
'We got a report that <name>Billy</name> met <name>Elsa</name> yesterday. <name>Billy</name> is suspicious.'

How can I extract specific data from e-prime output (.txt file)

Been learning Python the last couple of days for the function of completing a data extraction. I'm not getting anywhere & hope one of you lovely people can advise.
I need to extract data that follows: RESP, CRESP, RTTime and RT.
Here's a snippit for an example of the mess I have to deal with.
Thoughts?
Level: 4
*** LogFrame Start ***
Procedure: ActProcScenarios
No: 1
Line1: It is almost time for your town's spring festival. A friend of yours is
Line2: on the committee and asks if you would be prepared to help out with the
Line3: barbecue in the park. There is a large barn for use if it rains.
Line4: You hope that on that day it will be
pfrag: s-n-y
pword: sunny
pletter: u
Quest: Does the town have an autumn festival?
Correct: {LEFTARROW}
ScenarioListPract: 1
Topic: practice
Subtheme: practice
ActPracScenarios: 1
Running: ActPracScenarios
ActPracScenarios.Cycle: 1
ActPracScenarios.Sample: 1
DisplayFragInstr.OnsetDelay: 17
DisplayFragInstr.OnsetTime: 98031
DisplayFragInstr.DurationError: -999999
DisplayFragInstr.RTTime: 103886
DisplayFragInstr.ACC: 0
DisplayFragInstr.RT: 5855
DisplayFragInstr.RESP: {DOWNARROW}
DisplayFragInstr.CRESP:
FragInput.OnsetDelay: 13
FragInput.OnsetTime: 103899
FragInput.DurationError: -999999
FragInput.RTTime: 104998

I think regular expressions would be the right tool here because the \b word boundary anchors allow you to make sure that RESP only matches a whole word RESP and not just part of a longer word (like CRESP).
Something like this should get you started:
>>> import re
>>> for line in myfile:
... match = re.search(r"\b(RT|RTTime|RESP|CRESP): (.*)", line)
... if match:
... print("Matched {0} with value {1}".format(match.group(1),
... match.group(2)))
Output:
Matched RTTime with value 103886
Matched RT with value 5855
Matched RESP with value {DOWNARROW}
Matched CRESP with value
Matched RTTime with value 104998

transform it to a dict first, then just get items from the dict as you wish
d = {k.strip(): v.strip() for (k, v) in
[line.split(':') for line in s.split('\n') if line.find(':') != -1]}
print (d['DisplayFragInstr.RESP'], d['DisplayFragInstr.CRESP'],
d['DisplayFragInstr.RTTime'], d['DisplayFragInstr.RT'])
>>> ('{DOWNARROW}', '', '103886', '5855')

I think you may be making things harder for yourself than needed. E-prime has a file format called .edat that is designed for the purpose you are describing. An edat file is another format that contains the same information as the .txt file but it a way that makes extracting variables easier. I personally only use the type of text file you have posted here as a form of data storage redundancy.
If you are doing things this way because you do not have a software key, it might help to know that the E-Merge and E-DataAid programs for eprime don't require a key. You only need the key for editing build files. Whoever provided you with the .txt files should probably have an install disk for these programs. If not, it is available on the PST website (I believe you need a serial code to create an account, but not certain)
Eprime generally creates a .edat file that matches the content of the text file you have posted an example of. Sometimes though if eprime crashes you don't get the edat file and only have the .txt. Luckily you can generate the edat file from the .txt file.
Here's how I would approach this issue: If you do not have the edat files available first use E-DataAid to recover the files.
Then presuming you have multiple participants you can use e-merge to merge all of the edat files together for all participants in who completed this task.
Open the merged file. It might look a little chaotic depending on how much you have in the file. You can got to Go to tools->Arrange columns This will show a list of all your variables. Adjust so that only the desired variables are in the right hand box. Hit ok.
Looking at the file you posted it says level 4 at the top so I'm guessing there are a lot of procedures in this experiment. If you have many procedures in the program you might at this point have lines that just have startup info and NULL in the locations where your variables or interest are. You and fix this by going to tools->filter and creating a filter to eliminate those lines. Sometimes also depending on file structure you might also end up with duplicate lines of the same data. You can also fix this with filtering.
You can then export this file as a csv

import re
import pprint
def parse_logs(file_name):
with open(file_name, "r") as f:
lines = [line.strip() for line in f.readlines()]
base_regex = r'^.*{0}: (.*)$'
match_terms = ["RESP", "CRESP", "RTTime", "RT"]
regexes = {term: base_regex.format(term) for term in match_terms}
output_list = []
for line in lines:
for key, regex in regexes.items():
match = re.match(regex, line)
if match:
match_tuple = (key, match.groups()[0])
output_list.append(match_tuple)
return output_list
pprint.pprint(parse_logs("respregex"))
Edit: Tim and Guy's answers are both better. I was in a hurry to write something and missed two much more elegant solutions.

lists and sublists

i use this code to split a data to make a list with three sublists.
to split when there is * or -. but it also reads the the \n\n *.. dont know why?
i dont want to read those? can some one tell me what im doing wrong?
this is the data
*Quote of the Day
-Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence - Robert Frost
-Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten - B. F. Skinner
*Fact of the Day
-Fractals, an important part of chaos theory, are very useful in studying a huge amount of areas. They are present throughout nature, and so can be used to help predict many things in nature. They can also help simulate nature, as in graphics design for movies (animating clouds etc), or predict the actions of nature.
-According to a recent survey by Just-Eat, not everyone in The United Kingdom actually knows what the Scottish delicacy, haggis is. Of the 1,623 British people polled:\n\n * 18% of Brits thought haggis was some sort of Scottish animal.\n\n * 15% thought it was a Scottish musical instrument.\n\n * 4% thought it was a character from Harry Potter.\n\n * 41% didn't even know what Scotland's national dish was.\n\nWhile a small number of Scots admitted not knowing what haggis was either, they also discovered that 68% of Scots would like to see Haggis delivered as takeaway.
-With the growing concerns involving Facebook and its ever changing privacy settings, a few software developers have now engineered a website that allows users to trawl through the status updates of anyone who does not have the correct privacy settings to prevent it.\n\nNamed Openbook, the ultimate aim of the site is to further expose the problems with Facebook and its privacy settings to the general public, and show people just how easy it is to access this type of information about complete strangers. The site works as a search engine so it is easy to search terms such as 'don't tell anyone' or 'I hate my boss', and searches can also be narrowed down by gender.
*Pet of the Day
-Scottish Terrier
-Land Shark
-Hamster
-Tse Tse Fly
END
i use this code:
contents = open("data.dat").read()
data = contents.split('*') #split the data at the '*'
newlist = [item.split("-") for item in data if item]
to make that wrong similar to what i have to get list

The "\n\n" is part of the input data, so it's preserved in python. Just add a strip() to remove it:
finallist = [item.strip() for item in newlist]
See the strip() docs: http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#str.strip
UPDATED FROM COMMENT:
finallist = [item.replace("\\n", "\n").strip() for item in newlist]

open("data.dat").read() - reads all symbols in file, not only those you want.
If you don't need '\n' you can try content.replace("\n",""), or read lines (not whole content), and truncate the last symbol'\n' of each line.

This is going to split any asterisk you have in the text as well.
Better implementation would be to do something like:
lines = []
for line in open("data.dat"):
if line.lstrip.startswith("*"):
lines.append([line.strip()]) # append a list with your line
elif line.lstrip.startswith("-"):
lines[-1].append(line.strip())
For more homework, research what's happening when you use the open() function in this way.

The following solves your problem i believe:
result = [ [subitem.replace(r'\n\n', '\n') for subitem in item.split('\n-')]
for item in open('data.txt').read().split('\n*') ]
# now let's pretty print the result
for i in result:
print '***', i[0], '***'
for j in i[1:]:
print '\t--', j
print
Note I split on new-line + * or -, in this way it won't split on dashes inside the text. Also i replace the textual character sequence \ n \ n (r'\n\n') with a new line character '\n'. And the one-liner expression is list comprehension, a way to construct lists in one gulp, without multiple .append() or +