Question

If I have a string and want to return a word that includes a whitespace how would it be done?

For example, I have:

line = 'This is a group of words that include #this and @that but not ME ME'

response = [ word for word in line.split() if word.startswith("#") or  word.startswith('@')  or word.startswith('ME ')]

print response ['#this', '@that', 'ME']

So ME ME does not get printed because of the whitespace.

Thanks

Answer 1

You could just keep it simple:

line = 'This is a group of words that include #this and @that but not ME ME'

words = line.split()

result = []

pos = 0
try:
    while True:
        if words[pos].startswith(('#', '@')):
            result.append(words[pos])
            pos += 1
        elif words[pos] == 'ME':
            result.append('ME ' + words[pos + 1])
            pos += 2
        else:
            pos += 1
except IndexError:
    pass

print result

Think about speed only if it proves to be too slow in practice.