Good use for itertools.dropwhile and itertools.takewhile

[Nick Mellor]

Hi Neil,

Here's some sample data. The live data is about 300 minor variations on the sample data, about 20,000 lines.

Nick

Notes:

1. Whitespace is only used for word boundaries. Surplus whitespace is not significant and can be stripped

2. Retain punctuation and parentheses

3. Product is zero or more words in all caps at start of line

4. Description is zero or more words beginning with first word that is not all caps. Description continues to the end of the line

5. Return tuple of strings (product, description)


Sample data
---

BEANS hand picked
BEETROOT certified organic
BOK CHOY (bunch)
BROCCOLI Mornington Peninsula
BRUSSEL  SPROUTS
CABBAGE green
CABBAGE Red
CAPSICUM RED
CARROTS
CARROTS loose
CARROTS juicing, certified organic
CARROTS Trentham, large seconds, certified organic
CARROTS Trentham, firsts, certified organic
CAULIFLOWER
CELERY Mornington Peninsula IPM grower 
CELERY Mornington Peninsula IPM grower 
CUCUMBER
EGGPLANT
FENNEL
GARLIC (from Argentina)
GINGER fresh uncured
KALE (bunch)
KOHL RABI certified organic
LEEKS
 LETTUCE iceberg
MUSHROOM cup or flat
MUSHROOM Swiss brown
ONION brown
ONION red
ONION spring (bunch)
PARSNIP, certified organic
POTATOES certified organic
POTATOES Sebago
POTATOES Desiree
POTATOES Bullarto chemical free
POTATOES Dutch Cream
POTATOES Nicola
POTATOES Pontiac
POTATOES Otway Red
POTATOES teardrop
PUMPKIN certified organic
SCHALLOTS brown
SNOW PEAS
SPINACH I'll try to get certified organic (bunch)
SWEET POTATO gold certified organic 
SWEET POTATO red small
SWEDE certified organic
TOMATOES  Qld
TURMERIC fresh certified organic
ZUCCHINI
APPLES Harcourt  Pink Lady, Fuji, Granny Smith
APPLES Harcourt 2 kg bags, Pink Lady or Fuji (bag)
AVOCADOS
AVOCADOS certified organic, seconds
BANANAS Qld, organic
GRAPEFRUIT
GRAPES crimson seedless
KIWI FRUIT Qld certified organic
LEMONS
LIMES
MANDARINS
ORANGES Navel
PEARS Beurre Bosc Harcourt new season
PEARS Packham, Harcourt new season
SULTANAS 350g pre-packed bags
EGGS Melita free range, Barker's Creek
BASIL (bunch)
CORIANDER (bunch)
DILL (bunch)
MINT (bunch)
PARSLEY (bunch)


On Thursday, 6 December 2012 00:29:13 UTC+11, Neil Cerutti  wrote:
> On 2012-12-05, Nick Mellor <thebalancepro at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Terry,
> 
> >
> 
> > For my money, and especially in your versions, despite several
> 
> > expert solutions using other features, itertools has it. It
> 
> > seems to me to need less nutting out than the other approaches.
> 
> > It's short, robust, has a minimum of symbols, uses simple
> 
> > expressions and is not overly clever. If we could just get used
> 
> > to using takewhile.
> 
> 
> 
> The main reason most of the solutions posted failed is lack of
> 
> complete specification to work with while sumultaneously trying
> 
> to make as tiny and simplistic a solution as possible.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm struggling with the empty description bug right now. ;)
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Neil Cerutti