Some help with a regular expression in Python

Question

I am very new to both Python and regular expressions, so bear with me. I have some text that looks like this:

Change 421387 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]

    Some random text    including line breaks

Change 421388 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]

    Some other random text  including line breaks

Now, I want to use python along with a regular expression to split this into a tuple. In the end I want the tuple to contain two elements.

Element 0:

Change 421387 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]

    Some random text    including line breaks

Element 1:

Change 421388 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]

    Some other random text  including line breaks

I realize that I can use regex to recognize the pattern formed by:

the word "Change"
a space
some digits
some text
a date in the form ####/##/##
some text
@
some text
line break

I know it could be broken down further, but I think recognizing these things is good enough for my purposes.

Once I come up with a regular expression for that pattern, how can I use it to split the string into a tuple of strings?

"Bare with me" is an invitation to undress.

agf
– agf

2011-09-20 22:36:30 +00:00
Commented Sep 20, 2011 at 22:36 — agf
– agf, Commented Sep 20, 2011 at 22:36

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-20 22:39:08Z

4

With a lookahead assertion.

>>> re.split(r'(?=\s+Change \d+ on \d{4})\s+', '''    Change 421387 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]
...     Some random text including line breaks
...     Change 421388 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]
...     Some other random text including line breaks''')
['', 'Change 421387 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]\n    Some random text including line breaks', 'Change 421388 on 2011/09/20 by [email protected]\n    Some other random text including line breaks']

answered Sep 20, 2011 at 22:39

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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1 Comment

Adam S Over a year ago

Thank you so much! It would have taken me forever to figure this out.

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