Say I have a string 'ad>ad>ad>>ad' and I want to split on this on the '>' (not the '>>' chars). Just picked up regex and was wondering if there is a way (special character) to split on a specific part of the matched expression, rather than splitting on the whole matched expression, for example the regex could be:
re.split('[^>]>[^>]', 'ad>ad>ad>>ad')
Can you get it to split on the char in parenthesis [^>](>)[^>] ?
You need to use lookarounds:
re.split(r'(?<!>)>(?!>)', 'ad>ad>ad>>ad')
See the regex demo
The (?<!>)>(?!>) pattern only matches a > that is not preceded with a < (due to the negative lookbehind (?<!>)) and that is not followed with a < (due to the negative lookahead (?!>)).
Since lookarounds do not consume the characters (unlike negated (and positive) character classes, like [^>]), we only match and split on a < symbol without "touching" the symbols around it.
Try with \b>\b
This will check for single > surrounded by non-whitespace characters. As the string in the question is continuous stream of characters checking word boundary with \b is simplest method.
> is enclosed with spaces, or there is just a space on the right or left? Then, it will not work.
