Need better string methods

[Max M]

benjamin schollnick wrote:

>>line = "..../bgref/stats.stf| SPICE | 3.2.7  | John    Anderson  \n"
> 
>    I am assuming your running into these lines on a regular basis, so
> make a wrapper around your python function...  Call it "Cleanup" or
> "Parse_bar_line_string" or something that makes sense to your
> users, and have them call that function....


Or if it needs to be a bit more flexible, and the data allways follow 
that recursive pattern in your line, it could be a recursive function::

     def recursive_split(data, *args)

That would be used like::

     result = recursive_split(data, '|', '.')

So that the string would build nested lists that are recursively split 
on the arguments in the order they are passed.

In fact I wonder why such a function isn't a string method anyway, as 
that approach is used so often for parsing simple files. Most of the 
times I use split, I use it recursively on the input file. Ie for a 
small tab seperated text file it would be:

data = """
a:1\tb:2\tc:3
d:4\te:5\tf:6
g:7\th:8\th:9
"""

result = recursive_split(data, '\n', '\t', ':')
for line in result:
     for item in line:
         key, value = item


regards Max M