How to test characters of a string

[De ongekruisigde]

On 2022-06-08, 2QdxY4RzWzUUiLuE at potatochowder.com <2QdxY4RzWzUUiLuE at potatochowder.com> wrote:
> On 2022-06-08 at 08:07:40 -0000,
> De ongekruisigde <ongekruisigde at news.eternal-september.org> wrote:
>
>> Depending on the problem a regular expression may be the much simpler
>> solution. I love them for e.g. text parsing and use them all the time.
>> Unrivaled when e.g. parts of text have to be extracted, e.g. from lines
>> like these:
>> 
>>   root:x:0:0:System administrator:/root:/run/current-system/sw/bin/bash
>>   dhcpcd:x:995:991::/var/empty:/run/current-system/sw/bin/nologin
>>   nm-iodine:x:996:57::/var/empty:/run/current-system/sw/bin/nologin
>>   avahi:x:997:996:avahi-daemon privilege separation user:/var/empty:/run/current-system/sw/bin/nologin
>>   sshd:x:998:993:SSH privilege separation user:/var/empty:/run/current-system/sw/bin/nologin
>>   geoclue:x:999:998:Geoinformation service:/var/lib/geoclue:/run/current-system/sw/bin/nologin
>> 
>> Compare a regexp solution like this:
>> 
>>   >>> g = re.search(r'([^:]*):([^:]*):(\d+):(\d+):([^:]*):([^:]*):(.*)$' , s)
>>   >>> print(g.groups())
>>   ('geoclue', 'x', '999', '998', 'Geoinformation service', '/var/lib/geoclue', '/run/current-system/sw/bin/nologin')
>> 
>> to the code one would require to process it manually, with all the edge
>> cases. The regexp surely reads much simpler (?).
>
> Uh...
>
>     >>> import pwd # https://docs.python.org/3/library/pwd.html
>     >>> [x for x in pwd.getpwall() if x[0] == 'geoclue']
>     [pwd.struct_passwd(pw_name='geoclue', pw_passwd='x', pw_uid=992, pw_gid=992, pw_gecos='Geoinformation service', pw_dir='/var/lib/geoclue', pw_shell='/sbin/nologin')]

Yeah... Well, it was just an example and it must be clear by now I'm not
a Python programmer.

-- 
<StevenK> You're rewriting parts of Quake in *Python*?
<knghtbrd> MUAHAHAHA