v # invalid expression ?

[Anthony Liu]

I am trying to split a string like so:

re.split(',|。|、|!|:|,|?|“|”|)|(|;',
my_string)

Python complains like so:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python23\codes\regextest.py", line 27, in
-toplevel-
ultimate =
re.split(',|。|、|!|:|,|?|“|”|)|(|;',
ch[0])
File "c:\python23\lib\sre.py", line 156, in split
return _compile(pattern, 0).split(string,
maxsplit)
File "c:\python23\lib\sre.py", line 229, in _compile
raise error, v # invalid expression
error: nothing to repeat

Does this mean that the regular expression I pass to
the split function is not valid?

That expression is just like ',|)|#|!', that is, an
or-ed list of punctuations. Then why invalid?

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[Eric Brunel]

Anthony Liu wrote:

I am trying to split a string like so:

re.split(',|。|、|!|:|,|?|“|”|)|(|;',
my_string)

Python complains like so:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python23\codes\regextest.py", line 27, in
-toplevel-
ultimate =
re.split(',|。|、|!|:|,|?|“|”|)|(|;',
ch[0])
File "c:\python23\lib\sre.py", line 156, in split
return _compile(pattern, 0).split(string,
maxsplit)
File "c:\python23\lib\sre.py", line 229, in _compile
raise error, v # invalid expression
error: nothing to repeat

Does this mean that the regular expression I pass to
the split function is not valid?

That expression is just like ',|)|#|!', that is, an
or-ed list of punctuations. Then why invalid?

Because ?, (, and ) are special characters in regular expressions. You must
escape them with a backslash:

re.split(',|。|、|!|:|,|\\?|\\)|\\(|;', 'foo,bar(spam)')

['foo', 'bar', 'spam', '']

HTH
--
- Eric Brunel <eric (underscore) brunel (at) despammed (dot) com> -
PragmaDev : Real Time Software Development Tools - http://www.pragmadev.com