String split on new line tab and some number of spaces

Question

I m trying to perform a string split on a set of somewhat irregular data that looks something like    n tName  John Smith  n t  Home  Anytown USA  n t    Phone  555-555-555  n t  Other Home  Somewhere Else  n t Notes  Other data  n tName  Jane Smith  n t  Misc  Data with spaces   I d like to convert this into a tuple dict where I later will split on the colon    but first I need to get rid of all the extra whitespace  I m guessing a regex is the best way but I can t seem to get one that works  below is my attempt   data string split   n t

User · Answer

gt  gt  gt  for line in s splitlines            line   line strip           if not line continue         ary append line split            gt  gt  gt  ary    Name     John Smith      Home     Anytown USA      Misc     Data with spaces      gt  gt  gt  dict ary    Home     Anytown USA    Misc     Data with spaces    Name     John Smith    gt  gt  gt

User · Answer

If you look at the documentation for str split      If sep is not specified or is None  a different splitting algorithm is applied  runs of consecutive whitespace are regarded as a single separator  and the result will contain no empty strings at the start or end if the string has leading or trailing whitespace  Consequently  splitting an empty string or a string consisting of just whitespace with a None separator returns       In other words  if you re trying to figure out what to pass to split to get   n tName  Jane Smith  to   Name     Jane    Smith    just pass nothing  or None    This almost solves your whole problem  There are two parts left   First  you ve only got two fields  the second of which can contain spaces  So  you only want one split  not as many as possible  So   s split None  1    Next  you ve still got those pesky colons  But you don t need to split on them  At least given the data you ve shown us  the colon always appears at the end of the first field  with no space before and always space after  so you can just remove it   key  value   s split None  1  key   key  -1    There are a million other ways to do this  of course  this is just the one that seems closest to what you were already trying

User · Answer

You can kill two birds with one regex stone    gt  gt  gt  r            n tName  John Smith      n t  Home  Anytown USA      n t    Phone  555-555-555      n t  Other Home  Somewhere Else      n t Notes  Other data      n tName  Jane Smith      n t  Misc  Data with spaces          gt  gt  gt  import re  gt  gt  gt  print re findall r   S        s     S    r     Name    John Smith      Home    Anytown USA      Phone    555-555-555      Other Home    Somewhere Else      Notes    Other data      Name    Jane Smith      Misc    Data with spaces     gt  gt  gt

User · Answer

Just use  strip    it removes all whitespace for you  including tabs and newlines  while splitting  The splitting itself can then be done with data string splitlines      s strip   for s in data string splitlines      Output    gt  gt  gt   s strip   for s in data string splitlines      Name  John Smith    Home  Anytown USA    Phone  555-555-555    Other Home  Somewhere Else    Notes  Other data    Name  Jane Smith    Misc  Data with spaces     You can even inline the splitting on   as well now    gt  gt  gt   s strip   split       for s in data string splitlines       Name    John Smith      Home    Anytown USA      Phone    555-555-555      Other Home    Somewhere Else      Notes    Other data      Name    Jane Smith      Misc    Data with spaces

User · Answer

You can use this  string strip   split

User · Answer

Regex s aren t really the best tool for the job here  As others have said  using a combination of str strip   and str split   is the way to go  Here s a one liner to do it    gt  gt  gt  data       n tName  John Smith      n t  Home  Anytown USA      n t    Phone  555-555-555      n t  Other Home  Somewhere Else      n t Notes  Other data      n tName  Jane Smith      n t  Misc  Data with spaces     gt  gt  gt   line strip   split       0  line split       1  for line in data splitlines   if line strip            Name    Jane Smith    Other Home    Somewhere Else    Notes    Other data    Misc    Data with spaces    Phone    555-555-555    Home    Anytown USA

[python] String split on new line, tab and some number of spaces

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