Question

Given:

x = '1 (2,3), 4 (5)'

How would I get:

y = [(1,2),(1,3),(4,5)] ?

Thank you.

Answer 1

>>> x = '1 (2,3), 4 (5)'
>>> gp = re.compile('\d+\s*\([\d,]+\)(?=,?)')
>>> # digit, whitespace, (, digits or commas, ), maybe a comma
>>> for token in gp.findall(x):
...     token = token.split("(", 1)
...     left, right = int(token[0]), map(int, token[1][:-1].split(","))
...     for elt in right:
...             print((left, elt))
...
(1, 2)
(1, 3)
(4, 5)

Warning: this is fragile because of the regex-based parsing. (For instance, it assumes all your numbers are integers.) If your input is more flexible than I have assumed, you may wish to consider either generalising the regex or moving to a proper parsing library.

A neat use would be to put it in a function and change print to yield, to make it a generator.