Split a string by a delimiter in python

Question

How to split this string where __ is the delimiter

MATCHES__STRING

To get an output of ['MATCHES', 'STRING']?

Solution 1

You can use the str.split method: string.split('__')

>>> "MATCHES__STRING".split("__")
['MATCHES', 'STRING']

Solution 2

You may be interested in the csv module, which is designed for comma-separated files but can be easily modified to use a custom delimiter.

import csv
csv.register_dialect( "myDialect", delimiter = "__", <other-options> )
lines = [ "MATCHES__STRING" ]

for row in csv.reader( lines ):
    ...

Solution 3

When you have two or more elements in the string (in the example below there are three), then you can use a comma to separate these items:

date, time, event_name = ev.get_text(separator='@').split("@")

After this line of code, the three variables will have values from three parts of the variable ev.

So, if the variable ev contains this string and we apply separator @:

Sa., 23. März@19:00@Klavier + Orchester: SPEZIAL

Then, after the split operation the variable

• date will have value Sa., 23. März
• time will have value 19:00
• event_name will have value Klavier + Orchester: SPEZIAL

Comments

[getekha]

docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#str.split

[Tony Veijalainen]

It is worth to read the python standard documents and trying to understand few programs others have made to start to grasp basics of Python. Practise and copying/modifying are great tools to learn language.

[EndenDragon]

I was wondering, what is the difference between the first example (simply using split()) and the second example (with a for loop)?

[Sébastien Vercammen]

@EndenDragon The for loop will automatically apply x.strip() and return a list of matches without whitespace on either side. The devil is in the details.

[Aran-Fey]

Hey, since this is a very popular question, I edited it to ask only 1 specific question and removed the part with the spaces around the delimiter because it wasn't clear what the OP even expected to happen (Since there never was a question in the question). I think the question (and answers) are more useful this way, but feel free to rollback all the edits if you disagree.

[Gino Mempin]

"then you can use a comma" It's called unpacking a list.

[Timo]

Often you just want one part of the splitted string. Get it with 'match'.split('delim')[0] for the first one, etc.