scanf in python...?

[Andrew Dalke]

Tony Waterman wrote in message <39ebd839.159714 at news>...
>Does python have any way to mimic scanf ?

http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw.py?req=show&file=faq04.033.htp

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Python FAQ Entry

4.33. Is there a scanf() or sscanf() equivalent?

Not as such.
For simple input parsing, the easiest approach is usually to split the line
into whitespace-delimited words using string.split(), and to convert decimal
strings to numeric values using string.atoi(), string.atol() or
string.atof(). (Python's atoi() is 32-bit and its atol() is arbitrary
precision.) If you want to use another delimiter than whitespace, use
string.splitfield() (possibly combining it with string.strip() which removes
surrounding whitespace from a string).

For more complicated input parsing, regular expressions (see module re) are
better suited and more powerful than C's sscanf().

There's a contributed module that emulates sscanf(), by Steve Clift; see
contrib/Misc/sscanfmodule.c of the ftp site:


    http://www.python.org/ftp/python/contrib-09-Dec-1999/Misc/

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Hmmm, isn't "splitfield" deprecated?  Just fixed the FAQ.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at acm.org