Question

I am trying to split a string by commas “,”

For example:

"hi, welcome"  I would like to produce ["hi","welcome"]

however:

"'hi,hi',hi" I would like to produce ["'hi,hi'","hi"]

"'hi, hello,yes','hello, yes','eat,hello'" I would like to produce ["'hi, hello,yes'","'hello, yes'","'eat,hello'"]

"'hiello, 332',9" I would like to produce ["'hiello, 332'","9"]

I dont think the .split() function could be used, Does anyone know a way I could do this, perhaps with regex?

Answer 1

You can use the csv module with the quotechar argument, or you can convert your inputs to use the more standard " character for their quote character.

>>> import csv
>>> from cStringIO import StringIO
>>> first=StringIO('hi, welcome')
>>> second=StringIO("'hi,hi',hi")
>>> third=StringIO("'hi, hello,yes','hello, yes','eat,hello'")
>>> fourth=StringIO("'hiello, 332',9")
>>> rfirst=csv.reader(first,quotechar="'")
>>> rfirst.next()
['hi', ' welcome']
>>> rsecond=csv.reader(second,quotechar="'")
>>> rsecond.next()
['hi,hi', 'hi']
>>> rthird=csv.reader(third,quotechar="'")
>>> rthird.next()
['hi, hello,yes', 'hello, yes', 'eat,hello']
>>> rfourth=csv.reader(fourth,quotechar="'")
>>> rfourth.next()
['hiello, 332', '9']

>>> second=StringIO('"hi,hi",hi') # This will be more straightforward to interpret.
>>> r=csv.reader(second)
>>> r.next()
['hi,hi', 'hi']
>>> third=StringIO('"hi, hello,yes","hello, yes","eat,hello"')
>>> r=csv.reader(third)
>>> r.next()
['hi, hello,yes', 'hello, yes', 'eat,hello']