scanf in python...?

[Terry Reedy]

"Tony Waterman" <tonyw54 at home.com> wrote in message
> Does python have any way to mimic scanf ? I just bought Python on
> Win32 and I can't find anything in there about it, or on the
> python.org html tutorial. Also; how many ways to mimic scanf are
> there?

xscanf(x, format,  pointer1, pointer2, .... pointern) is not directly
possible in Python because Python does not have pointers.

However, it would be possible to write a scan(string,format) function that
would return a tuple of values.  Since Python uses C formats for the %
operator, it would add a nice symmetry.  [IE, scan(format%tuple,format) ==
tuple].

It might be possible to do this by replacing the %format specifiers by the
corresponding re specifiers and using re behind the scenes.  Or by using
openly available scanf code.

Terry J. Reedy