Recommended data structure for newbie

[Paddy]

Hi Matthew,
>From your example, it is hard to work out what character or character
string is a separator, and what string needs to become a separate word
when seen in the original file.

In the example below you need to learn about regular expressions. the
split is based on the two RE's held in variables 'separators' and
'otherwords'. the first is used to split a line the second is used to
extract sub-words.
The output is printed in two formats that could be piped to a file for
later re-use; as a python list, then as space separated lines of words.
The csv module could be used to create a csv file for reading into
spreadsheets and databases. No doubt an XML formatted output is just as
straight-forward, (but XML is not, yet, my cup of tea).

The prog: word_up.py:

import re
import pprint

instring = '''gee fre asd[234
ger dsf asd[243
gwer af as.:^25a
'''
separators = r'''[ \t\r\f\v]+'''
otherwords = r'''(?x)
  (.*)
  (
    \[
    | \^
  )
  (.*)
'''

def word_up(instring, separators, otherwords):
    """ for less confusing names substitute
        line for cameo, and w for jockstrap  in the function body :-)

        # doctest

        >>> from pprint import pprint as pp
        >>> i = 'gee fre asd[234\nger dsf asd[243\ngwer af as.:^25a\n'
        >>> print i
        gee fre asd[234
        ger dsf asd[243
        gwer af as.:^25a

        >>> s = r'''[ \t\r\f\v]+'''
        >>> o = '(?x)\n  (.*)\n  (\n    \\[\n    | \\^\n  )\n  (.*)\n'
        >>> print o
        (?x)
          (.*)
          (
            \[
            | \^
          )
          (.*)

        >>> pp(word_up(i, s, o))
        [['gee', 'fre', 'asd', '[', '234'],
         ['ger', 'dsf', 'asd', '[', '243'],
         ['gwer', 'af', 'as.:', '^', '25a']]
        >>>
    """
    line_words = []
    for cameo in instring.splitlines():
        # some words are separated by separator chars
        word_split = re.split(separators, cameo)
        # extract separate sub_words
        word_extracts = []
        for word in word_split:
            matched = re.match(otherwords, word)
            if matched:
                word_extracts += [jockstrap for jockstrap in
matched.groups() if jockstrap]
            else:
                word_extracts.append(word)
        line_words.append(word_extracts)
    return line_words

line_words = word_up(instring, separators, otherwords)

print '\n# Python format extracted words as list of lists'
pprint.pprint(line_words)

print '\n# Unix friendly space separated words'
for l in line_words:
    for w in l:
        print w,
    print


-- Paddy