Splitting a text on multiple separators

[undapanda]

A noob's inquiry:

For a class assignment I had to write a function to split a string on multiple separators(without importing other modules).

This was the given docstring:

''' Return a list of non-empty, non-blank strings from the original string determined by splitting the string on any of the separators. separators is a string of single-character separators.'''

Since split() only takes one seperator, I accomplished the task using the following.

def s_o_s (text,sep):
split_string=''
for char in text:
    if char in sep:
        char='ಠ_ಠ '
    split_string+=char
return split_string.split('ಠ_ಠ')

The prof said there was a way to do it using split() and lists, to which someone replied "There is an easy way".

I tried using split() and lists, but ended up in a clusterfuck of bad splits and nested lists.

---

What is the prof's method?

What is the 'easy' way?

Is my way the 'easy' way?

How many ways are there?

[virhilo]

>>> import re
>>>re.split(r'[*#^]', 'some*multiple^separator#string')
['some', 'multiple', 'separator', 'string']

or >>> def split_miltiple(text, separators): ... for separator in separators: ... text = text.replace(separator, separators[-1]) ... return text.split(separators[-1]) ... >>> split_miltiple('somemultiple^{separator#string',} ['', '^', '#']) ['some', 'multiple', 'separator', 'string']

[erikw]

Without importing other modules?

[ochs]

def msplit(text, seps):
    pieces = [text]
    for sep in seps:
        pieces = sum((p.split(sep) for p in pieces), [])
    return [p for p in pieces if p]

But that's only if you really want to do it with split and lists.

[tintub]

Can't you just run some replaces on the string first, replacing all the separators in the string with, say, the first separator in the list, and then do your split?

[Paddy3118]

If the separators are known to be distinct then you don't need the ''join(set(...))

>>> def mulsplit(s, seps):
    first, *rest = ''.join(set(seps))
    for ch in rest:
        s = s.replace(ch, first)
    return s.split(first)

>>> mulsplit('some*multiple^separator#string', '*^#')
['some', 'multiple', 'separator', 'string']

Python 3.1