Question

i have data of thousand records which i read line by line . Each line has some fields and their value but field names contain a non ascii character, below is the example of such a record :

|              |   | X:720                      | N°227: Done

where X and N°(non ascii character) are fieldnames and 720,227 and “Done” are field values which i have to extract.
These fields are optional which may exist or may not .
Now I have to check whether these fields exist in line or not and if it exists then what is its value(for example X field is having value 720 and N° is having value 227 and “Done”)
Please let me know how to do this using regex in python ,is there any another way to do this in python?

Answer 1

Sometimes regex is good for such thing, sometimes split() and other string method will be easier. It is up to you to chose:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf8 -*-

import re
RE_TXT = re.compile(r'\|\s*X:(\S+)\s*\|\s*N\D*(\d+):\s*(.*)$')
txt = '|              |   | X:720                      | N°227: Done'
rx = RE_TXT.search(txt)
if rx:
    print(rx.group(1))
    print(rx.group(2))
    print(rx.group(3))

print('-' * 20)

# other way without regex, but with more complicated logic:
arr = [s.strip() for s in txt.split('|')]
if arr[3].startswith('X:'):
    print(arr[3].split(':')[1])
    N, state = arr[4].split(':')
    N = N[3:]
    state = state.strip()
    print(N)
    print(state)

As for regexp:

• \s* is zero or more white characters
• \S+ is one or more non white character
• \d is for digits
• \D is for non digits
• . means any character
• r before string means “raw” string so you do not need to escape backslash