regex help: splitting string gets weird groups

[Jon Clements]

On 8 Apr, 19:49, gry <georgeryo... at gmail.com> wrote:
> [ python3.1.1, re.__version__='2.2.1' ]
> I'm trying to use re to split a string into (any number of) pieces of
> these kinds:
> 1) contiguous runs of letters
> 2) contiguous runs of digits
> 3) single other characters
>
> e.g.   555tHe-rain.in#=1234   should give:   [555, 'tHe', '-', 'rain',
> '.', 'in', '#', '=', 1234]
> I tried:>>> re.match('^(([A-Za-z]+)|([0-9]+)|([-.#=]))+$', '555tHe-rain.in#=1234').groups()
>
> ('1234', 'in', '1234', '=')
>
> Why is 1234 repeated in two groups?  and why doesn't "tHe" appear as a
> group?  Is my regexp illegal somehow and confusing the engine?
>
> I *would* like to understand what's wrong with this regex, though if
> someone has a neat other way to do the above task, I'm also interested
> in suggestions.

Avoiding re's (for a bit of fun):
(no good for unicode obviously)

import string
from itertools import groupby, chain, repeat, count, izip

s = """555tHe-rain.in#=1234"""

unique_group = count()
lookup = dict(
    chain(
	izip(string.ascii_letters, repeat('L')),
	izip(string.digits, repeat('D')),
	izip(string.punctuation, unique_group)
        )
    )
parse = dict(D=int, L=str.capitalize)


print [ parse.get(key, lambda L: L)(''.join(items)) for key, items in
groupby(s, lambda L: lookup[L]) ]
[555, 'The', '-', 'Rain', '.', 'In', '#', '=', 1234]

Jon.