splitting perl-style find/replace regexp using python

[John Pye]

Hi all

I have a file with a bunch of perl regular expressions like so:

/(^|[\s\(])\*([^ ].*?[^ ])\*([\s\)\.\,\:\;\!\?]|$)/$1'''$2'''$3/ #
bold
/(^|[\s\(])\_\_([^ ].*?[^ ])\_\_([\s\)\.\,\:\;\!\?]|$)/$1''<b>$2<\/
b>''$3/ # italic bold
/(^|[\s\(])\_([^ ].*?[^ ])\_([\s\)\.\,\:\;\!\?]|$)/$1''$2''$3/ #
italic

These are all find/replace expressions delimited as '/search/replace/
# comment' where 'search' is the regular expression we're searching
for and 'replace' is the replacement expression.

Is there an easy and general way that I can split these perl-style
find-and-replace expressions into something I can use with Python, eg
re.sub('search','replace',str) ?

I though generally it would be good enough to split on '/' but as you
see the <\/b> messes that up. I really don't want to learn perl
here :-)

Cheers
JP