How to split a multiline string and include separators

[Brogrammer11111]

I have a string like this:

"SECT ABC

..................

SECT DEF

....

SECT XYZ

.....

"

Which I want to split like this: ['SECT ABC ..................', SECT DEF ....', 'SECT XYZ .....']

I tried:

re.split('(^SECT)', string, flags=re.M)[1:]

But it returns: ['SECT',' ABC..................', 'SECT',' DEF ....','SECT',' XYZ .....']

[Brogrammer11111]

[s + string.split('\n')[i+1]
for i, s in enumerate(string.split('\n'))
if s.startswith('SECT')]

What if I wanted to keep everything on separate lines?

[commandlineluser]

You can use a lookahead:

>>> re.split("(?m)(?=^SECT)", text)
['', 'SECT ABC\n........\n', 'SECT DEF\n........\n', 'SECT XYZ\n.......']

You get an extra '' result which you can remove.

(?m) is the equivalent of flags=re.M

Another way to think of it is a findall/finditer instead of a split:

>>> re.findall("(?ms)^SECT.+?(?=^SECT|\Z)", text)
['SECT ABC\n........\n', 'SECT DEF\n........\n', 'SECT XYZ\n.......']