I have a list of product codes in a text file, on each line is the product code that looks like:
abcd2343 abw34324 abc3243-23A
So it is letters followed by numbers and other characters.
I want to split on the first occurrence of a number.
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Answer
import re s='abcd2343 abw34324 abc3243-23A' re.split('(d+)',s) > ['abcd', '2343', ' abw', '34324', ' abc', '3243', '-', '23', 'A']
Or, if you want to split on the first occurrence of a digit:
re.findall('d*D+',s) > ['abcd', '2343 abw', '34324 abc', '3243-', '23A']
d+
matches 1-or-more digits.d*D+
matches 0-or-more digits followed by 1-or-more non-digits.d+|D+
matches 1-or-more digits or 1-or-more non-digits.
Consult the docs for more about Python’s regex syntax.
re.split(pat, s)
will split the string s
using pat
as the delimiter. If pat
begins and ends with parentheses (so as to be a “capturing group”), then re.split
will return the substrings matched by pat
as well. For instance, compare:
re.split('d+', s) > ['abcd', ' abw', ' abc', '-', 'A'] # <-- just the non-matching parts re.split('(d+)', s) > ['abcd', '2343', ' abw', '34324', ' abc', '3243', '-', '23', 'A'] # <-- both the non-matching parts and the captured groups
In contrast, re.findall(pat, s)
returns only the parts of s
that match pat
:
re.findall('d+', s) > ['2343', '34324', '3243', '23']
Thus, if s
ends with a digit, you could avoid ending with an empty string by using re.findall('d+|D+', s)
instead of re.split('(d+)', s)
:
s='abcd2343 abw34324 abc3243-23A 123' re.split('(d+)', s) > ['abcd', '2343', ' abw', '34324', ' abc', '3243', '-', '23', 'A ', '123', ''] re.findall('d+|D+', s) > ['abcd', '2343', ' abw', '34324', ' abc', '3243', '-', '23', 'A ', '123']