Generic string import like in strptime?

[Neil Cerutti]

On Jan 16, 2008 3:34 AM, Andre <joa at hrz.tu-chemnitz.de> wrote:
> Hi there
>
> Is there a function like strptime, which takes a string and converts it
> into an array depending on a format string I provide. Like:
> >>> a = '3456\tblub-blib.0.9'
> >>> b = '%d\t%s-%s.%f'
> >>> c = mysticalfunction(a,b)
> >>> print c
> [3456,'blub','blib',0.9]

No, not in the standard distribution of Python.

In Python, you're expected to use appropriate string methods, or hold
your nose and drag out the re module. There are some scanf-like
libraries for Python available on the net, e.g.,
http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dyoo/python/scanf/.  None of them have
become popular enough with Python users to make it into the standard
distribution.

An excellent tool that can be used in these cases is pyparsing, which
is also not in the standard distribution.
http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/

-- 
Neil Cerutti <mr.cerutti+python at gmail.com>