Why does one regex routine work and not the other one?

[Peter Otten]

TtfnJohn wrote:

> I have two small scripts that while on the surface should both work
> the problem is they don't.
> 
> Here's the first one:
> import re
> 
> testString = 'Thap,fpvi,*!wtyd@*.dip.t-dialin.net:*!ylx@*.dip.t-
> dialin.net:*!lajaz@*.dip.t-dialin.net::::::'
> 
> reobj = re.compile(r"(.*),(.*),(.*):::(.*):::(.*)")
> 
> testString1 = reobj.search(testString)
> 
> if testString1:
>    match0 = testString1.group(0)
>    match1 = testString1.group(1)
> 
> This works as expected with any number of seed strings.
> 
> Now then:
> 
> This one consistently fails even though it should work, as near as I
> can tell.
> import os
> import re
> import readline
> from buzhug import Base
> 
> # initialize a few things
> voiceuser = Base('voiceuser')
> # now  to create & open the database. If the database already exists
> this will
> # simply open it
> voiceuser.create(('name',str),('ircname',str),('first',str),
> ('second',str),('third',str),('fourth',str),('fifth',str),
> ('sixth',str),('seventh',str),mode="open")
> 
> #next is to open the file we'll read from and then process it and add
> the names
> # to the database
> # the first step is to compile the regular expression
> testString = re.compile(r"(.*),(.*),(.*):::(.*):::(.*)")
> voiceList = open('friendslist','r')
> 
> while 1:
>     line = voiceList.readline()
>     if not line:
>         break

The above is spelt
  for line in voiceList:

>     print len(line)
>     line = line[:-2]

Change that to 

line = line[:-1] 

or, more robust,

line = line.rstrip() 

Otherwise you might be clipping the last ":".

Peter