Question

What regex can I use to match “.#,#.” within a string. It may or may not exist in the string. Some examples with expected outputs might be:

Test1.0,0.csv      -> ('Test1', '0,0', 'csv')         (Basic Example)
Test2.wma          -> ('Test2', 'wma')                (No Match)
Test3.1100,456.jpg -> ('Test3', '1100,456', 'jpg')    (Basic with Large Number)
T.E.S.T.4.5,6.png  -> ('T.E.S.T.4', '5,6', 'png')     (Doesn't strip all periods)
Test5,7,8.sss      -> ('Test5,7,8', 'sss')            (No Match)
Test6.2,3,4.png    -> ('Test6.2,3,4', 'png')          (No Match, to many commas)
Test7.5,6.7,8.test -> ('Test7', '5,6', '7,8', 'test') (Double Match?)

The last one isn’t too important and I would only expect that .#,#. would appear once. Most files I’m processing, I would expect to fall into the first through fourth examples, so I’m most interested in those.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

To allow for multiple consecutive matches, use lookahead/lookbehind:

r'(?<=\.)\d+,\d+(?=\.)'

Example:

>>> re.findall(r'(?<=\.)\d+,\d+(?=\.)', 'Test7.5,6.7,8.test')
['5,6', '7,8']

We can also use lookahead to perform the split as you want it:

import re
def split_it(s):
    pieces = re.split(r'\.(?=\d+,\d+\.)', s)
    pieces[-1:] = pieces[-1].rsplit('.', 1) # split off extension
    return pieces

Testing:

>>> print split_it('Test1.0,0.csv')
['Test1', '0,0', 'csv']
>>> print split_it('Test2.wma')
['Test2', 'wma']
>>> print split_it('Test3.1100,456.jpg')
['Test3', '1100,456', 'jpg']
>>> print split_it('T.E.S.T.4.5,6.png')
['T.E.S.T.4', '5,6', 'png']
>>> print split_it('Test5,7,8.sss')
['Test5,7,8', 'sss']
>>> print split_it('Test6.2,3,4.png')
['Test6.2,3,4', 'png']
>>> print split_it('Test7.5,6.7,8.test')
['Test7', '5,6', '7,8', 'test']