using re module to find " but not " alone ... is this a BUG in re?

[Duncan Booth]

John Machin <sjmachin at lexicon.net> wrote:

> What you want is:
> 
>>> import re
>>> text = r'frob this " avoid this \", OK?'
>>>> text
> 'frob this " avoid this \\", OK?'
>>> re.sub(r'(?<!\\)"', r'\"', text)
> frob this \\" avoid this \\", OK?'
>>>
> 

Or you can do it without using regular expressions at all. Just replace 
them all and then fix up the result:

>>> text = r'frob this " avoid this \", OK?'
>>> text.replace('"', r'\"').replace(r'\\"', r'\"')
'frob this \\" avoid this \\", OK?'


-- 
Duncan Booth http://kupuguy.blogspot.com