How do I split a string into an array of characters in python?

Question

I have a variable like this:

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"

And I want the end result to be like this:

bug = ["url1.com","url2.com","url3.com","url4.com"]

I tried:

#!/usr/bin/python

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
bug = bug.split(";")
print bug

But it outputs:

['^bug:url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com^']

Please note that the variable bug consists of a bunch of URLs not just ordinary words, maybe with regex ? I don't know sorry I'm still new to programming, please help me fix this.

If you want to cut off `^bug:` from the beginning and `^` from the end, write `bug = bug[5:-1]` and then split with `bug.split(';')` — khelwood, May 12 '17 at 13:29
That's not an array of characters; it's an array of strings. — ChrisGPT was on strike, May 12 '17 at 14:01
Does this answer your question? [How to split a string into an array of characters in Python?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4978787/how-to-split-a-string-into-an-array-of-characters-in-python) — TylerH, Jul 15 '20 at 15:14

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 12 '17 at 13:55

2

I think the existing answers are too complicated for this simple task so I'm posting my comment as an answer:

>>> bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
>>> bug[5:-1].split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

You slice the unwanted characters from the beginning and end of your string and afterwards you split the string by your delimiter ;. Of course, if there's anything dynamic about the format of your string, e.g. it could start with '^someunwantedtext:', then use a regular expression.

answered May 12 '17 at 13:55

timgeb

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Problem is "*the variable bug consists of a bunch of URLs not just ordinary words*" so `bug` might not be always of the same size. Your solution will only work if you know the length of URLs which if I understand well is not the case here. – Nuageux May 12 '17 at 13:59
@Nuageux no, this solution is independent from the length of the urls. You discard the first 5 and the last character from the string. What's in between does not matter. – timgeb May 12 '17 at 14:00
My mistake you are right. I misunderstood some part of the question. I thought that "bug" could be something else that just "bug". I'm not a native english speaker, sorry. – Nuageux May 12 '17 at 14:06

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 12 '17 at 13:34

First, split to remove part before ':' and to remove part after '^'. Then split for each ';'

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
bug = bug.split(":")[1:][0].split("^")[:-1][0]
bug = bug.split(";")
print bug
# ['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 12 '17 at 13:41

0

You could use lstrip() and rstrip(). This way you could even have ^ and bug inside the url and it won't be stripped.

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
buglist = bug.lstrip("^bug").lstrip(":").rstrip("^").split(";")

Output: ['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

edited May 12 '17 at 13:41

Nuageux

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answered May 12 '17 at 13:38

L.S.

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Keerthana Prabhakaran · Answer 4 · 2017-05-12T13:59:54.320

0

You can actually use regex for this purpose! replace the bug and special character in your data and split the urls with ;

import re
bug = "^hi.com;hi.com:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
print re.sub(r'((\w+.com;?)*:)|\^','',bug).split(';')

Output:

['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

edited May 12 '17 at 13:59

answered May 12 '17 at 13:51

Keerthana Prabhakaran

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score 0 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

A combination of replace and split does the job:

>>> s = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
>>> s.replace('^','').replace('bug:','').split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

Step-by-step explanation

>>> s.replace('^','')
'bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com'
>>> s.replace('^','').replace('bug:','')
'url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com'
>>> s.replace('^','').replace('bug:','').split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']
>>>

A better solution

As timgeb mentioned my method fails if the urls contain the string "bug:". timgeb's solution (https://stackoverflow.com/a/43939538/2194843) seems to be fine:

>>> s[5:-1].split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

Will fail if any url contains the substring `'bug:'`. – timgeb May 12 '17 at 14:03 — timgeb, May 12 '17 at 14:03

How do I split a string into an array of characters in python?

5 Answers5