Question

A periodic computer generated message (simplified):

Hello user123,

- (604)7080900
- 152
- minutes

Regards

Using python, how can I extract “(604)7080900”, “152”, “minutes” (i.e. any text following a leading "- " pattern) between the two empty lines (empty line is the \n\n after “Hello user123” and the \n\n before “Regards”). Even better if the result string list are stored in an array. Thanks!

edit: the number of lines between two blank lines are not fixed.

2nd edit:

e.g.

hello

- x1
- x2
- x3

- x4

- x6
morning
- x7

world

x1 x2 x3 are good, as all lines are surrounded by 2 empty lines, x4 is also good for the same reason. x6 is not good because no blank line follows it, x7 is not good as no blank in front of it. x2 is good (not like x6, x7) because the line ahead is a good line and the line following it is also good.

this conditions might be not clear when I posted the question:

a continuous of good lines between 2 empty lines

good line must have leading "- "
good line must follow an empty line or follow another good line
good line must be followed by an empty line or followed by another good line

thanks

Answer 1

The simplest approach is to go over these lines (assuming you have a list of lines, or a file, or split the string into a list of lines) until you see a line that’s just '\n', then check that each line starts with '- ' (using the startswith string method) and slicing it off, storing the result, until you find another empty line. For example:

# if you have a single string, split it into lines.
L = s.splitlines()
# if you (now) have a list of lines, grab an iterator so we can continue
# iteration where it left off.
it = iter(L)
# Alternatively, if you have a file, just use that directly.
it = open(....)

# Find the first empty line:
for line in it:
    # Treat lines of just whitespace as empty lines too. If you don't want
    # that, do 'if line == ""'.
    if not line.strip():
        break
# Now starts data.
for line in it:
    if not line.rstrip():
        # End of data.
        break
    if line.startswith('- '):
        data.append(line[:2].rstrip())
    else:
        # misformed data?
        raise ValueError, "misformed line %r" % (line,)

Edited: Since you elaborate on what you want to do, here’s an updated version of the loops. It no longer loops twice, but instead collects data until it encounters a ‘bad’ line, and either saves or discards the collected lines when it encounters a block separator. It doesn’t need an explicit iterator, because it doesn’t restart iteration, so you can just pass it a list (or any iterable) of lines:

def getblocks(L):
    # The list of good blocks (as lists of lines.) You can also make this
    # a flat list if you prefer.
    data = []
    # The list of good lines encountered in the current block
    # (but the block may still become bad.)
    block = []
    # Whether the current block is bad.
    bad = 1
    for line in L:
        # Not in a 'good' block, and encountering the block separator.
        if bad and not line.rstrip():
            bad = 0
            block = []
            continue
        # In a 'good' block and encountering the block separator.
        if not bad and not line.rstrip():
            # Save 'good' data. Or, if you want a flat list of lines,
            # use 'extend' instead of 'append' (also below.)
            data.append(block)
            block = []
            continue
        if not bad and line.startswith('- '):
            # A good line in a 'good' (not 'bad' yet) block; save the line,
            # minus
            # '- ' prefix and trailing whitespace.
            block.append(line[2:].rstrip())
            continue
        else:
            # A 'bad' line, invalidating the current block.
            bad = 1
    # Don't forget to handle the last block, if it's good
    # (and if you want to handle the last block.)
    if not bad and block:
        data.append(block)
    return data

And here it is in action:

>>> L = """hello
...
... - x1
... - x2
... - x3
...
... - x4
...
... - x6
... morning
... - x7
...
... world""".splitlines()
>>> print getblocks(L)
[['x1', 'x2', 'x3'], ['x4']]