split encloser

[Tiller, Jason]

Hi, "Aussie", :)

Now, to be totally honest, I kicked myself after Robin pointed out that you
can get a CSV add-on module for Python.  DOH!  ::sigh::  Of course something
like this is available - this is hardly the first-ever application of CSV
(or TSV or whatever)...

I apologize if the commented regex wasn't detailed enough to completely
explain its function.  If you have any  questions, don't hesitate to ask.  I
can tell that the base regex I described in my previous message doesn't meet
all the possible situations that a more sophisticated CSV module might.

If you're just interested in understanding regex'es for potential
application in your own scripts, the regex chapter in "Programming Perl" is
/very/ good, IMHO.  There's always Jeffrey Freidl's "Mastering Regular
Expressions" - all of the solid concepts are there, regardless of language.
I apologize that I can't really offer insight into Python-based regex
processing - I just haven't studied it well, and the Programming Python
(1.3) book that I have devotes only five or so pages to the entire topic
("Programming Perl"'s regex chapter is 70 pages, and "Mastering..." is 308
pages).  I would hope that the more modern "Programming Python" does a
better job...

However, for solving your particular problem, I encourage you to take a look
at the CSV module that Robin mentioned in his post.

Good luck!

---Jason

P.S. - I found documentation for the 'findall' method inside 'pre': "pydoc
pre" from the prompt displayed it.   The 'pre' module looks like Emacs ugly
"infinite backslash" notation (\\\\ just for a literal backslash!).
However, the 'sre' module uses the single-backslash notation, which is a lot
simpler.  I found documentation on python.org here:
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/node99.html that discusses the
'finditer' method.  Funny that I couldn't find it via PyDoc...

-----Original Message-----
From: aussie2010 at yahoo.com [mailto:aussie2010 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 5:54 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: split encloser


Jason Tiller <jtiller at sjm.com> wrote in message
news:<mailman.1049417184.1536.python-list at python.org>...

> 
> Good luck!  I hope this pattern at least gives you a starting point
> for implementing the split() in Python.
> 
> ---Jason
> Sonos Handbell Ensemble

Jason, thanks a lot for the example and the explanation. I fired up
Perl and it worked like a charm. Now to try and understand it!  I
looked at stuff about Python regular expressions and there is
something called finditer and findall that might be useful for parsing
a string, but can't seem to find any documentation on them.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


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