Newbie needs help with regex strings

[Michael Spencer]

Dennis Benzinger wrote:
> Christopher Subich schrieb:
>> Paul McGuire wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> For the example listed, pyparsing is even overkill; the OP should 
>> probably use the csv module.
> 
> But the OP wants to parse lines with key=value pairs, not simply lines
> with comma separated values. Using the csv module will just separate the 
> key=value pairs and you would still have to take them apart.
> 
> Bye,
> Dennis
that, and csv.reader has another problem with this task:

  >>> csv.reader(["Pie=peach,quantity=2,ingredients='peaches,powdered sugar'"], 
quotechar = "'").next()
  ['Pie=peach', 'quantity=2', "ingredients='peaches", "powdered sugar'"]

i.e., it doesn't allow separators within fields unless either the *whole* field 
is quoted:

  >>> csv.reader(["Pie=peach,quantity=2,'ingredients=peaches,powdered sugar'"], 
quotechar = "'").next()
  ['Pie=peach', 'quantity=2', 'ingredients=peaches,powdered sugar']
  >>>

or the separator is escaped:

  >>> csv.reader(["Pie=peach,quantity=2,ingredients='peaches\,powdered sugar'"], 
quotechar = "'", escapechar = "\\").next()
  ['Pie=peach', 'quantity=2', "ingredients='peaches,powdered sugar'"]
  >>>


Michael