Question

Here are some simple function calls in python:

foo(arg1, arg2, arg3)
func1()

Assume it is a valid function call.

Suppose I read these lines while parsing a file.

What is the cleanest way to separate the function name and the args into a list with two elements, the first a string for the function name, and the second a string for the arguments?

Desired results:

["foo", "arg, arg2, arg3"]
["func1", ""]

I’m currently using string searches to find the first instance of “(” from the left side and the first instance of “)” from the right side and just splicing the string with those given indices, but I don’t like how I am approaching the problem.

Answer 1

I’m currently doing something similar using regular expressions. Adapting my code to your case, the following works with the examples you provide.

import re

def explode(s):
    pattern = r'(\w[\w\d_]*)\((.*)\)$'
    match = re.match(pattern, s)
    if match:
        return list(match.groups())
    else:
        return []