Python - How to split string into an array while ignoring inner arrays?

Question

I have a string that looks similar to the following:

string = "hello,2,test,1,[4,something,3],1,2"

When I split the string by commas I get the following array:

['hello', '2', 'test', '1', '[4', 'something', '3]', '1', '2']

How could I efficiently split the original string to instead get the following:

['hello', '2', 'test', '1', '[4,something,3]', '1', '2']

Are you eventually trying to turn this into ['hello', 2, 'test', 1, [4, 'something', 3], 1, 2]? — Matthias Fripp
– Matthias Fripp, Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 0:44

Zaya · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-07 00:37:27Z

2

Use regex

import re re.split(r",\s*(?![^[]*])",string)

Result:

['hello', '2', 'test', '1', '[4,something,3]', '1', '2']

Note this answer assumes no nested []

edited Jul 7, 2019 at 0:37

answered Jul 7, 2019 at 0:17

Zaya

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1 Comment

fizzybear Over a year ago

This fails for hello,2,test,1,[4,something,3],1,2,[4,[something],3]

Akaisteph7 · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-07 00:26:16Z

Here is one way:

string = "hello,2,test,1,[4,something,3],1,2"
string2 = string.split(",")
res = []
temp = []
found = False

for item in string2:
    if (not(found)):
        if "[" in item:
            found = True
            temp = []
            temp.append(item[1:])
        else:
            res.append(item)

    else:
        if "]" in item:
            found = False
            temp.append(item[:-1])
            final = str(temp).replace("'", "")
            res.append(final)
        else:
            temp.append(item)

print(res)

Output:

['hello', '2', 'test', '1', '[4, something, 3]', '1', '2']

cglacet · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-07 00:32:29Z

You can do it with a regular expression:

import re

string = "hello,2,test,1,[4,something,3],1,2"
x = re.findall(r'\[[^\]]+\](?=,|\b)|[^,]+(?=,|\b)', string)

x contains ['hello', '2', 'test', '1', '[4,something,3]', '1', '2'].

In the regex we have two cases separated by | (or). The first should handle the longer cases [something, in, brackets] the second can handle the simple cases. In case you are not familiar with it (?=,|\b) is a positive lookahead.

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