Question

I need to import a large amount of building codes from a text file to a SQL database. So far I have written the following code which successfully returns the code number and title. How can I match the text after a code’s title to the beginning of the next code?

Test.txt:

101.1 Title. This is an example code.

101.1.2 Local Fees. The local jurisdiction may charge fees for building permit
violations per Section 300.1.

import re

file=open(r'C:\Test.txt','r')
text=file.read()

codes=re.findall('(\d{3,4}.[\d.]+?){1}\s([\w\s]+[.]){1}',text)
for code in codes:
    print code[0],code[1]

This results in:

101.1 Title. I would like to have code[3] print ‘This is an example code.’

101.1.2 Local Fees.

Answer 1

Use re.split instead of re.findall. In your case:

>>> re.split('(\d{3,4}.[\d.]+?){1}\s([\w\s]+[.]){1}',text)

['', '101.1', 'Title.', ' This is an example code.\n\n', '101.1.2', 'Local Fees.', ' The local jurisdiction may charge fees for building permit violations per Section 300.1.\n']