Using wildcards...

[Roel Schroeven]

Harlin Seritt wrote:

> I looked all over the net but could not find if it is possible to
> insert wildcards into strings. What I am trying to do is this: I am
> trying to parse text from a Bible file. In case you're not familiar
> with the way the Bible organizes itself, it is broken down into Books >
> Chapters > Verses. The particular text I am working with are organized
> into Book files (*.txt -- flat text file). Here is what the file looks
> like:
> 
> {1:1} Random text here. {1:2} More text here. and so on.
> 
> Of course the {*} can be of any length, so I can't just do .split()
> based on the length of the bracket text. What I would like to do is to
> .split() using something akin to this:
> 
> textdata.split('{*}') # The '*' being a wildcard
> 
> Is this possible to do? If so, how is it done?

You can use the split function in the re module with a suitable regular 
expression:

  >>> re.split('{\d+:\d+}', textdata)
['', ' Random text here. ', ' More text here. and so on.']

{\d+:\d+} means 'match {, then one or more digits, then :, then one or 
more digits, then }'.

re.split('{.*}', textdata) would be a more direct translation of your 
wildcard, but that doesn't work: .* matches as much as possible, so in 
your example it would match '{1:1} Random text here. {1:2}' instead of 
just '{1:1}' and '{1:2}'.

-- 
If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
on the shoulders of giants.  -- Isaac Newton

Roel Schroeven