393

How can I get a string after a specific substring?

For example, I want to get the string after "world" in

my_string="hello python world, I'm a beginner"

...which in this case is: ", I'm a beginner")

10 Answers 10

630

The easiest way is probably just to split on your target word

my_string="hello python world , i'm a beginner"
print(my_string.split("world",1)[1])

split takes the word (or character) to split on and optionally a limit to the number of splits.

In this example, split on "world" and limit it to only one split.

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8 Comments

If i need to split a text with the 'low' word and it contains the word lower before it, this will not work!
you would simpley split 2x target.split('lower',1)[-1].split('low',1)[-1]
what if the sentence was "hello python Megaworld world , i'm a beginner ". How can I make it look at the whole word and not part of another as 'Megaworld'? Thanks
then the string you search is " world " ... or use regex for word boundrys
my_string.partition("world")[-1] (or ...[2]) is faster.
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109

I'm surprised nobody mentioned partition.

def substring_after(s, delim):
    return s.partition(delim)[2]

s1="hello python world, I'm a beginner"
substring_after(s1, "world")

# ", I'm a beginner"

IMHO, this solution is more readable than @arshajii's. Other than that, I think @arshajii's is the best for being the fastest -- it does not create any unnecessary copies/substrings.

6 Comments

This is a nice solution, and handles the case where the substring is not part of the base string nicely.
you get distinct id's (that are separated by several thousand) ... im not sure you dont create unneccessary substrings with this (and im too lazy to properly profile it)
@JoranBeasley, it clearly does create unnecessary substings. I think you misread my answer.
(so does arashi's I think ... )
Moreover, this is faster than str.split(..., 1).
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80
s1 = "hello python world , i'm a beginner"
s2 = "world"

print(s1[s1.index(s2) + len(s2):])

If you want to deal with the case where s2 is not present in s1, then use s1.find(s2) as opposed to index. If the return value of that call is -1, then s2 is not in s1.

4 Comments

you get distinct id's (that are separated by several thousand) ... im not sure you dont create unneccessary substrings with this
@JoranBeasley, we only call index(), len() and slice. There is no reason for index() and len() to create substrings, and if they do (I find it hard to believe), that's just an unnecessary implementation detail. Same for slice -- there is no reason for it to create substrings other than the one returned.
@shx2 print( s1[s1.index(s2) + len(s2):] is s1[s1.index(s2) + len(s2):])
@JoranBeasley what point are you trying to making with this snippet? That on multiple calls different objects are returned? by "unnecessary substrings" I mean substrings other than the one returned, i.e. substrings which are not necessary to create in order to derive the result.
68

You want to use str.partition():

>>> my_string.partition("world")[2]
" , i'm a beginner "

because this option is faster than the alternatives.

Note that this produces an empty string if the delimiter is missing:

>>> my_string.partition("Monty")[2]  # delimiter missing
''

If you want to have the original string, then test if the second value returned from str.partition() is non-empty:

prefix, success, result = my_string.partition(delimiter)
if not success: result = prefix

You could also use str.split() with a limit of 1:

>>> my_string.split("world", 1)[-1]
" , i'm a beginner "
>>> my_string.split("Monty", 1)[-1]  # delimiter missing
"hello python world , i'm a beginner "

However, this option is slower. For a best-case scenario, str.partition() is easily about 15% faster compared to str.split():

                                missing        first         lower         upper          last
      str.partition(...)[2]:  [3.745 usec]  [0.434 usec]  [1.533 usec]  <3.543 usec>  [4.075 usec]
str.partition(...) and test:   3.793 usec    0.445 usec    1.597 usec    3.208 usec    4.170 usec
      str.split(..., 1)[-1]:  <3.817 usec>  <0.518 usec>  <1.632 usec>  [3.191 usec]  <4.173 usec>
            % best vs worst:         1.9%         16.2%          6.1%          9.9%          2.3%

This shows timings per execution with inputs here the delimiter is either missing (worst-case scenario), placed first (best case scenario), or in the lower half, upper half or last position. The fastest time is marked with [...] and <...> marks the worst.

The above table is produced by a comprehensive time trial for all three options, produced below. I ran the tests on Python 3.7.4 on a 2017 model 15" Macbook Pro with 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7 and 16 GB ram.

This script generates random sentences with and without the randomly selected delimiter present, and if present, at different positions in the generated sentence, runs the tests in random order with repeats (producing the fairest results accounting for random OS events taking place during testing), and then prints a table of the results:

import random
from itertools import product
from operator import itemgetter
from pathlib import Path
from timeit import Timer

setup = "from __main__ import sentence as s, delimiter as d"
tests = {
    "str.partition(...)[2]": "r = s.partition(d)[2]",
    "str.partition(...) and test": (
        "prefix, success, result = s.partition(d)\n"
        "if not success: result = prefix"
    ),
    "str.split(..., 1)[-1]": "r = s.split(d, 1)[-1]",
}

placement = "missing first lower upper last".split()
delimiter_count = 3

wordfile = Path("/usr/dict/words")  # Linux
if not wordfile.exists():
    # macos
    wordfile = Path("/usr/share/dict/words")
words = [w.strip() for w in wordfile.open()]

def gen_sentence(delimiter, where="missing", l=1000):
    """Generate a random sentence of length l

    The delimiter is incorporated according to the value of where:

    "missing": no delimiter
    "first":   delimiter is the first word
    "lower":   delimiter is present in the first half
    "upper":   delimiter is present in the second half
    "last":    delimiter is the last word

    """
    possible = [w for w in words if delimiter not in w]
    sentence = random.choices(possible, k=l)
    half = l // 2
    if where == "first":
        # best case, at the start
        sentence[0] = delimiter
    elif where == "lower":
        # lower half
        sentence[random.randrange(1, half)] = delimiter
    elif where == "upper":
        sentence[random.randrange(half, l)] = delimiter
    elif where == "last":
        sentence[-1] = delimiter
    # else: worst case, no delimiter

    return " ".join(sentence)

delimiters = random.choices(words, k=delimiter_count)
timings = {}
sentences = [
    # where, delimiter, sentence
    (w, d, gen_sentence(d, w)) for d, w in product(delimiters, placement)
]
test_mix = [
    # label, test, where, delimiter sentence
    (*t, *s) for t, s in product(tests.items(), sentences)
]
random.shuffle(test_mix)

for i, (label, test, where, delimiter, sentence) in enumerate(test_mix, 1):
    print(f"\rRunning timed tests, {i:2d}/{len(test_mix)}", end="")
    t = Timer(test, setup)
    number, _ = t.autorange()
    results = t.repeat(5, number)
    # best time for this specific random sentence and placement
    timings.setdefault(
        label, {}
    ).setdefault(
        where, []
    ).append(min(dt / number for dt in results))

print()

scales = [(1.0, 'sec'), (0.001, 'msec'), (1e-06, 'usec'), (1e-09, 'nsec')]
width = max(map(len, timings))
rows = []
bestrow = dict.fromkeys(placement, (float("inf"), None))
worstrow = dict.fromkeys(placement, (float("-inf"), None))

for row, label in enumerate(tests):
    columns = []
    worst = float("-inf")
    for p in placement:
        timing = min(timings[label][p])
        if timing < bestrow[p][0]:
            bestrow[p] = (timing, row)
        if timing > worstrow[p][0]:
            worstrow[p] = (timing, row)
        worst = max(timing, worst)
        columns.append(timing)

    scale, unit = next((s, u) for s, u in scales if worst >= s)
    rows.append(
        [f"{label:>{width}}:", *(f" {c / scale:.3f} {unit} " for c in columns)]
    )

colwidth = max(len(c) for r in rows for c in r[1:])
print(' ' * (width + 1), *(p.center(colwidth) for p in placement), sep="  ")
for r, row in enumerate(rows):
    for c, p in enumerate(placement, 1):
        if bestrow[p][1] == r:
            row[c] = f"[{row[c][1:-1]}]"
        elif worstrow[p][1] == r:
            row[c] = f"<{row[c][1:-1]}>"
    print(*row, sep="  ")

percentages = []
for p in placement:
    best, worst = bestrow[p][0], worstrow[p][0]
    ratio = ((worst - best) / worst)
    percentages.append(f"{ratio:{colwidth - 1}.1%} ")

print("% best vs worst:".rjust(width + 1), *percentages, sep="  ")

1 Comment

great answer! especially because you provide the real reason this is better :P
25

If you want to do this using regex, you could simply use a non-capturing group, to get the word "world" and then grab everything after, like so

(?:world).*

The example string is tested here

6 Comments

some people when faced with a problem think "I know , Ill use a regular expression." ... now you have 2 problems...
haha, my mistake, I thought this was tagged regex so I tried to give a regex answer. Oh well, it's there now.
its all good ... its certainly one way of skinning this cat... overkill for this problem though (imho)
The non-capturing group link is no longer pointing to the right thing.
For those interested. Here is the full code result = re.search(r"(?:world)(.*)", "hello python world , i'm a beginner ").group(1)
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13

In Python 3.9, a new removeprefix method is being added:

>>> 'TestHook'.removeprefix('Test')
'Hook'
>>> 'BaseTestCase'.removeprefix('Test')
'BaseTestCase'

1 Comment

was going to add this but found this answer
7

You can use the package called substring. Just install using the command pip install substring. You can get the substring by just mentioning the start and end characters/indices.

For example:

import substring
s = substring.substringByChar("abcdefghijklmnop", startChar="d", endChar="n")
print(s)

Output:

# s = defghijklmn

Comments

7

Try this general approach:

import re

my_string="hello python world , i'm a beginner"
p = re.compile("world(.*)")
print(p.findall(my_string))

# [" , i'm a beginner "]

Comments

6

It's an old question but i faced a very same scenario, i need to split a string using as demiliter the word "low" the problem for me was that i have in the same string the word below and lower.

I solved it using the re module this way

import re

string = '...below...as higher prices mean lower demand to be expected. Generally, a high reading is seen as negative (or bearish), while a low reading is seen as positive (or bullish) for the Korean Won.'

# use re.split with regex to match the exact word
stringafterword = re.split('\\blow\\b',string)[-1]

print(stringafterword)
# ' reading is seen as positive (or bullish) for the Korean Won.'

# the generic code is:
re.split('\\bTHE_WORD_YOU_WANT\\b',string)[-1]

Hope this can help someone!

1 Comment

Perhaps you could also just use: string.partition(" low ")[2]? (Note the spaces on either side of low
0

If you prefer to do it using only python regular expressions re library, you can do it with Match.string property and Match.end() method of the Match object:

import re

my_string="hello python world, I'm a beginner"

match = re.search("world", my_string)

if match:
    print(match.string[match.end():])
    # , I'm a beginner

Comments

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