Problem in splitting a string

Angelo Secchi

Hi,
I have string of numbers and words like

',,,,,,23,,,asd,,,,,"name,surname",,,,,,,\n'

and I would like to split (I'm using string.split()) it using comma as
separator but I do not want to split in two also the "name,surname"
field. In other word I would like python in separating fields to skip
that particular comma.

How can I do that?

Thanks in advance

Angelo

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Jul 18 '05 #1

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1720

wes weston

Angelo Secchi wrote:

Angelo,
For example, how how would you want the example given to
be split?
wes

Jul 18 '05 #2

Angelo Secchi

Thanks, Wes. I would like the tring in my example splitted as:

['','','',and so on,'23','','','"name,surname"','','','',and so on,'\n']

Thanks again

angelo

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:23:56 GMT
wes weston <ww*****@att.net> wrote:

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Angelo Secchi PGP Key ID:EA280337
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Current Position:
Graduate Fellow Scuola Superiore S.Anna
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ph.: +39 050 883365
email: se****@sssup.it www.sssup.it/~secchi/
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Jul 18 '05 #3

wes weston

Angelo Secchi wrote:

Angelo,

Could you split the strings; then recombine list[14] + ',' + list[15] ?
wes

Jul 18 '05 #4

Jens Thiede

Angelo Secchi wrote:

You may want to look at regular expressions, but in the example you gave,
you just have to split the string at the quotation marks, then every second
item in the resulting list, was between quotes:

Regular expressions:
http://docs.python.org/lib/node109.html

A Regular Expressions Tutorial:
http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/

Hope That Helped,

Jens.

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Jul 18 '05 #5

Dave Brueck

Angelo Secchi wrote:

Python 2.3 has the csv module. See section 12.20.5 of the docs for some
examples.

-Dave

Jul 18 '05 #6

Peter Otten

Angelo Secchi wrote:

A minimal example using the csv module:

import csv
import cStringIO as stringio

stream = stringio.StringIO(
"""\
,,,,,,23,,,asd,,,,,"name,surname",,,,,,,
,,,,,,23,,,asd,,,,,"jo,black",,,,,,,
,,,,,,23,,,asd,,,,,"will,do",,,,,,,
""")
# could be:
# stream = file("tmp.csv")
for record in csv.reader(stream):
print record

Peter

Jul 18 '05 #7

Jeff Shannon

Angelo Secchi wrote:

You may be able to use regular expressions (the re module) to hack
something together that'll work for your particular case. In the
general case, though, splitting delimiter-separated values in the
presence of quoting and escaping is a nontrivial problem.

I remember some discussion, quite a while ago, about several people
working on a DSV module that would handle all of this stuff, but I don't
know what became of that.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

Jul 18 '05 #8

Paul McGuire

"Angelo Secchi" <se****@sssup.it> wrote in message
news:ma*************************************@pytho n.org...

Using pyparsing's commaSeparatedList (designed specifically to handle this
case):

from pyparsing import commaSeparatedList
testdata = ',,,,,,23,,,asd,,,,,"name,surname",,,,,,,\n'
print commaSeparatedList.parseString( testdata )

Gives:
['', '', '', '', '', '', '23', '', '', 'asd', '', '', '', '',
'"name,surname"', '', '', '', '', '', '', '']

Download pyparsing at http://pyparsing.sourceforge.net.

-- Paul

Jul 18 '05 #9

Byron

HI Angelo,

Here's a function that will take care of what you need:

-----------

def splitrecord(stringRec):
theRec = string.split(stringRec, ',') # Split record into a list.
name = theRec[14] # Store name in memory.
surname = theRec[15] # Store surname in memory.
name = name[1:] # Trim quote from name.
surname = surname[0:len(surname)-1] # Trim quote from surname.
theRec[14] = "%s, %s" % (name, surname) # Merge and store name,
surname in list.
del(theRec[15]) # Remove list item 15 from list. Not needed.
return theRec # Return list to user.

-----------

To use this list, do the following:

recordstring = ',,,,,,23,,,asd,,,,,"name,surname",,,,,,,\n'
newRecord = splitrecord(recordstring)
print newRecord

Result is:

['', '', '', '', '', '', '23', '', '', 'asd', '', '', '', '', 'name,
surname', '', '', '', '', '', '', '\n']

Hope this helps,

Byron
---
Angelo Secchi wrote:

Jul 18 '05 #10

Byron

Angelo,

Here is a shortened version of the function:

def splitrecord(stringRec):
theRec = string.split(stringRec, ',')
name = theRec[14][1:]
surname = theRec[15][0:len(theRec[15])-1]
theRec[14] = "%s, %s" % (name, surname)
del(theRec[15])
return theRec

----
Byron

Jul 18 '05 #11

Problem in splitting a string

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