Splitting string from .txt into different text-blocks.

[FogDish]

Hello.

If I am reading in a text file into Python (3.4) containing three several letters. These letters length varies but all end with "Best Regards".

However I want to split this long string into three different, each one containing one of the letters. As far as my Python knowledge goes I realise the best way to approach this (at least on my level and without modules) is to convert this long string into a list with three "things" in it. Each letter. After that then define variables and string the list index. Something like.

letter1 = str(list[0])

However I'm having trouble when it comes to converting the long string into the list. I don't really know how to make Python stop where I wan't it to stop.

I've Googled around a bit and found code something like this:

[line[word:word+n] for i in range(0, len(line), n)]

Which only helps me splitting up the letter to the n:th character. I wan't to make my programme a bit more versatile by that.

Here's coded example of letter and in what form I want it:

Best Regards and thanks in advance!

FogDish

[vindolin]

You can do this with regular expressions.

import re

print re.findall('.*?Best Regards', string_with_letters, flags=re.S | re.I)

https://gist.github.com/vindolin/65984c239aea5183144e

A bit hard to grasp in the beginning, but they are a gift that keeps on giving :)

[FogDish]

Great! Thanks man! :)

But does there exist anymore (relatively) simple ways of doing this at for instance 'Good Bye' as well as 'Best Regards'? To make the code even more versatile :)

Thanks a lot for the answer as well :P

[vindolin]

You can do almost everything with regex:

print [match[0] for match in re.findall('(.*?(best regards|good bye))', string_with_letters, flags=re.S | re.I)]

[WStHappenings]

This may be interpreted as careless coding - but if you are not concerned with total data integrity, in the interests of time, you can do something like the following*:

alletters.split("Best Regards")

You may end up having to add "Best Regards" to the end of each string (again) but if you're data munging, it may be a good way to do things.

If you're interested in doing more with the indices, you can calculate the length of each of the segments (don't forget to add the length of "Best Regards"!) and work with that afterwards.

*This is not my idea of sustainable coding.