How would I get everything before a : in a string Python

Question

I am looking for a way to get all of the letters in a string before a : but I have no idea on where to start. Would I use regex? If so how?

string = "Username: How are you today?"

Can someone show me a example on what I could do?

Answer 1

Just use the split function. It returns a list, so you can keep the first element:

>>> s1.split(':')
['Username', ' How are you today?']
>>> s1.split(':')[0]
'Username'

Answer 2

Using index:

>>> string = "Username: How are you today?"
>>> string[:string.index(":")]
'Username'

The index will give you the position of : in string, then you can slice it.

If you want to use regex:

>>> import re
>>> re.match("(.*?):",string).group()
'Username'                       

match matches from the start of the string.

you can also use itertools.takewhile

>>> import itertools
>>> "".join(itertools.takewhile(lambda x: x!=":", string))
'Username'

Answer 3

You don't need regex for this

>>> s = "Username: How are you today?"

You can use the split method to split the string on the ':' character

>>> s.split(':')
['Username', ' How are you today?']

And slice out element [0] to get the first part of the string

>>> s.split(':')[0]
'Username'

Answer 4

I have benchmarked these various technics under Python 3.7.0 (IPython).

TLDR

• fastest (when the split symbol c is known): pre-compiled regex.
• fastest (otherwise): s.partition(c)[0].
• safe (i.e., when c may not be in s): partition, split.
• unsafe: index, regex.

Code

import string, random, re

SYMBOLS = string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits
SIZE = 100

def create_test_set(string_length):
    for _ in range(SIZE):
        random_string = ''.join(random.choices(SYMBOLS, k=string_length))
        yield (random.choice(random_string), random_string)

for string_length in (2**4, 2**8, 2**16, 2**32):
    print("\nString length:", string_length)
    print("  regex (compiled):", end=" ")
    test_set_for_regex = ((re.compile("(.*?)" + c).match, s) for (c, s) in test_set)
    %timeit [re_match(s).group() for (re_match, s) in test_set_for_regex]
    test_set = list(create_test_set(16))
    print("  partition:       ", end=" ")
    %timeit [s.partition(c)[0] for (c, s) in test_set]
    print("  index:           ", end=" ")
    %timeit [s[:s.index(c)] for (c, s) in test_set]
    print("  split (limited): ", end=" ")
    %timeit [s.split(c, 1)[0] for (c, s) in test_set]
    print("  split:           ", end=" ")
    %timeit [s.split(c)[0] for (c, s) in test_set]
    print("  regex:           ", end=" ")
    %timeit [re.match("(.*?)" + c, s).group() for (c, s) in test_set]

Results

String length: 16
  regex (compiled): 156 ns ± 4.41 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)
  partition:        19.3 µs ± 430 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
  index:            26.1 µs ± 341 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split (limited):  26.8 µs ± 1.26 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split:            26.3 µs ± 835 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  regex:            128 µs ± 4.02 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)

String length: 256
  regex (compiled): 167 ns ± 2.7 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)
  partition:        20.9 µs ± 694 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  index:            28.6 µs ± 2.73 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split (limited):  27.4 µs ± 979 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split:            31.5 µs ± 4.86 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  regex:            148 µs ± 7.05 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000 loops each)

String length: 65536
  regex (compiled): 173 ns ± 3.95 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)
  partition:        20.9 µs ± 613 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
  index:            27.7 µs ± 515 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split (limited):  27.2 µs ± 796 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split:            26.5 µs ± 377 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  regex:            128 µs ± 1.5 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)

String length: 4294967296
  regex (compiled): 165 ns ± 1.2 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)
  partition:        19.9 µs ± 144 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
  index:            27.7 µs ± 571 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split (limited):  26.1 µs ± 472 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  split:            28.1 µs ± 1.69 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
  regex:            137 µs ± 6.53 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)

Answer 5

partition() may be better then split() for this purpose as it has the better predicable results for situations you have no delimiter or more delimiters.

Answer 6

To solve this using RegEx, you can use the Negative Lookahead/Negative Lookbehind approach.

For example, the code below for Python:

import re
string = "Username: How are you today?"
regex='(\S*)[:]'

data=re.findall(regex, string)
print(data)