Code improvement question

[Mike Dewhirst]

On 16/11/2023 9:34 am, Rimu Atkinson via Python-list wrote:
>
>>>>
>>> Why don't you use re.findall?
>>>
>>> re.findall(r'\b[0-9]{2,7}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\b', txt)
>>
>> I think I can see what you did there but it won't make sense to me - 
>> or whoever looks at the code - in future.
>>
>> That answers your specific question. However, I am in awe of people 
>> who can just "do" regular expressions and I thank you very much for 
>> what would have been a monumental effort had I tried it.
>
> I feel the same way about regex. If I can find a way to write 
> something without regex I very much prefer to as regex usually adds 
> complexity and hurts readability.
>
> You might find https://regex101.com/ to be useful for testing your 
> regex. You can enter in sample data and see if it matches.
>
> If I understood what your regex was trying to do I might be able to 
> suggest some python to do the same thing. Is it just removing numbers 
> from text?
>
> The for loop, "for bit in bits" etc, could be written as a list 
> comprehension.
>
> pieces = [bit if len(bit) > 6 else "" for bit in bits]
>
> For devs familiar with other languages but new to Python this will 
> look like gibberish so arguably the original for loop is clearer, 
> depending on your team.
>
> It's worth making the effort to get into list comprehensions though 
> because they're awesome.

I agree qualitatively 100% but quantitively perhaps I agree 80% where 
readability is easy.

I think that's what you are saying anyway.


>
>
>
>>
>> That little re.sub() came from ChatGPT and I can understand it 
>> without too much effort because it came documented
>>
>> I suppose ChatGPT is the answer to this thread. Or everything. Or 
>> will be.
>
> I am doubtful. We'll see!
>
> R
>
>


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