How to decipher :re.split(r"(\(\([^)]+\)\))" in the example

[alister]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2014 23:33:27 -0400, Roy Smith wrote:

> In article <mailman.11747.1405046292.18130.python-list at python.org>,
>  Tim Chase <python.list at tim.thechases.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2014-07-10 22:18, Roy Smith wrote:
>> > > Outside this are \( and \): these are literal opening and closing
>> > > bracket characters. So:
>> > > 
>> > >    \(\([^)]+\)\)
>> >
>> > although, even better would be to use to utterly awesome
>> >> re.VERBOSE
>> > flag, and write it as:
>> > 
>> >      \({2} [^)]+ \){2}
>> 
>> Or heck, use a multi-line verbose expression and comment it for
>> clarity:
>> 
>>   r = re.compile(r"""
>>     (            # begin a capture group
>>      \({2}       # two literal "(" characters [^)]+       # one or more
>>      non-close-paren characters \){2}       # two literal ")"
>>      characters
>>     )            # close the capture group """, re.VERBOSE)
>> 
>> -tkc
> 
> Ugh.  That reminds me of the classic commenting anti-pattern:
> 
> l = []                  # create an empty list for i in range(10):     #
> iterate over the first 10 integers
>     l.append(i)         # append each one to the list


to some extent yes, but when it comes to regexs stating "The bleedin 
obvious" can be useful because as this whole thread shows it is not 
always "bleedin obvious" especially after a nights sleep


-- 
"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
		-- Franco Spisani