Python string parsing walkthrough

Split a string on space, get a list, show its type, print it out:

el@apollo:~/foo$ python
>>> mystring = "What does the fox say?"

>>> mylist = mystring.split(" ")

>>> print type(mylist)
<type 'list'>

>>> print mylist
['What', 'does', 'the', 'fox', 'say?']

If you have two delimiters next to each other, empty string is assumed:

el@apollo:~/foo$ python
>>> mystring = "its  so   fluffy   im gonna    DIE!!!"

>>> print mystring.split(" ")
['its', '', 'so', '', '', 'fluffy', '', '', 'im', 'gonna', '', '', '', 'DIE!!!']

Split a string on underscore and grab the 5th item in the list:

el@apollo:~/foo$ python
>>> mystring = "Time_to_fire_up_Kowalski's_Nuclear_reactor."

>>> mystring.split("_")[4]
"Kowalski's"

Collapse multiple spaces into one

el@apollo:~/foo$ python
>>> mystring = 'collapse    these       spaces'

>>> mycollapsedstring = ' '.join(mystring.split())

>>> print mycollapsedstring.split(' ')
['collapse', 'these', 'spaces']

When you pass no parameter to Python's split method, the documentation states: "runs of consecutive whitespace are regarded as a single separator, and the result will contain no empty strings at the start or end if the string has leading or trailing whitespace".

Hold onto your hats boys, parse on a regular expression:

el@apollo:~/foo$ python
>>> mystring = 'zzzzzzabczzzzzzdefzzzzzzzzzghizzzzzzzzzzzz'
>>> import re
>>> mylist = re.split("[a-m]+", mystring)
>>> print mylist
['zzzzzz', 'zzzzzz', 'zzzzzzzzz', 'zzzzzzzzzzzz']

The regular expression "[a-m]+" means the lowercase letters a through m that occur one or more times are matched as a delimiter. re is a library to be imported.

Or if you want to chomp the items one at a time:

el@apollo:~/foo$ python
>>> mystring = "theres coffee in that nebula"

>>> mytuple = mystring.partition(" ")

>>> print type(mytuple)
<type 'tuple'>

>>> print mytuple
('theres', ' ', 'coffee in that nebula')

>>> print mytuple[0]
theres

>>> print mytuple[2]
coffee in that nebula