Question

I’m relatively new to programming and trying get a (very) long list of information into a table using Python. I installed HTML.py from Decalage and now need to get my list turned into into a list of lists that HTML.py can parse.

Is there an easy way to split a list like this:

['[phone]<br />\nOrganization Name', 'Street Name', 'City', 'Zip code', '[phone]<br />\nOrg Name 2', 'Address', 'City', 'Zip code 2', '[phone]</p>\n\n']

into a list of lists at “\n”?

So ideally the result would look like something like this:

[ ['Previous info', '[phone]<br />']
['Organization name', 'Street name', 'City', 'Zip Code', '[phone]<br />']
['Org Name 2', 'Address', 'City', 'Zip Code 2', '[phone]</p>']
]

Suggestions for an alternate method of getting that list into an organized table a la HTML.py would also be helpful.

Answer 1

>>> a
['[phone]<br />\nOrganization Name', 'Street Name', 'City', 'Zip code', '[phone]<br />\nOrg Name 2', 'Address', 'City', 'Zip code 2', '[phone]</p>\n\n']
>>> [i.split("\n") for i in a]
[['[phone]<br />', 'Organization Name'], ['Street Name'], ['City'], ['Zip code'], ['[phone]<br />', 'Org Name 2'], ['Address'], ['City'], ['Zip code 2'], ['[phone]</p>', '', '']]

If you want it flattened:

>>> import itertools
>>> list(itertools.chain(*[i.split("\n") for i in a]))
['[phone]<br />', 'Organization Name', 'Street Name', 'City', 'Zip code', '[phone]<br />', 'Org Name 2', 'Address', 'City', 'Zip code 2', '[phone]</p>', '', '']

Edit:

Thanks to @agf’s comment, now I got it i think:

>>> a
['[phone]<br />\nOrganization Name', 'Street Name', 'City', 'Zip code', '[phone]<br />\nOrg Name 2', 'Address', 'City', 'Zip code 2', '[phone]</p>\n\n']
>>> [i.split("{}") for i in "{}".join(a).split("\n")]
[['[phone]<br />'], ['Organization Name', 'Street Name', 'City', 'Zip code', '[phone]<br />'], ['Org Name 2', 'Address', 'City', 'Zip code 2', '[phone]</p>'], [''], ['']]

Assuming “{}” is never used on your original list, else change it to something not in your list, |, ;:; etc.

And you can easily filter the output for removing list contains just empty strings with:

filter("".join, result)