Parsing String according to Dates in Python

Question

I have a string:

05-01-2015 12:27 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Fangede RLI på hans mobil. Ring igen kl. 15 19-11-2014 11:17 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Gik på svarer igen og lagt besked til RLI at ringe tilbage. 12-11-2014 09:38 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 12-11-2014 09:32 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 15-10 00:00 Forsøgt RLI igen og lagt besked om han vil ringe. 14-10-2014 13:14 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 15-10 00:00 14-10-2014 13:10 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 14-10 00:00 Lagt besked til RLI at ringe 14-10-2014 13:06 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 14-10 00:00 test

I need to parse this string into pieces so that each piece starts with dates. For this purpose, I tried to benefit from regex like :

match = re.search(r'\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4}', text)

But this code only finds dates. And I cant go further. I need to have pieces such as:

first_piece: 05-01-2015 12:27 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Fangede RLI på hans mobil. Ring igen kl. 15

second_piece: 19-11-2014 11:17 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Gik på svarer igen og lagt besked til RLI at ringe tilbage.

and so on.

Could you please give me some insights about achieving these sub strings?

Thanks in advance.

`parsedatetime.Calendar().nlp(text)` fails in this case. – jfs Jun 23 '15 at 23:02 — jfs, Jun 23 '15 at 23:02

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 23 '15 at 20:13

5

Does this work?

re.split(r' (?=\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4})', text)

answered Jun 23 '15 at 20:13

Thanks marcus. İts great – Şansal Birbaş Jun 23 '15 at 20:26
When i get the text from excel cell with xlrd or other, I cant parse the text. It comes as a whole. What can it cause that? I even tried encode/decode things. I mean, in above case, match[0] gives whole text, and match[1] or others dont exist. In normal case that i put text directly into this code, there is no problem. – Şansal Birbaş Jun 23 '15 at 21:59
it is posted here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31014673/re-split-doesnt-work-properly-with-a-string-coming-from-excel-cell?noredirect=1#comment50056753_31014673 – Şansal Birbaş Jun 23 '15 at 23:18

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 23 '15 at 20:20

Marcus has the right answer but there's a fun little detail that's missing from their answer.

Test file multiple_dates.py

import re

test_string = u"05-01-2015 12:27 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Fangede RLI på hans mobil. Ring igen kl. 15 19-11-2014 11:17 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Gik på svarer igen og lagt besked til RLI at ringe tilbage. 12-11-2014 09:38 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 12-11-2014 09:32 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 15-10 00:00 Forsøgt RLI igen og lagt besked om han vil ringe. 14-10-2014 13:14 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 15-10 00:00 14-10-2014 13:10 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 14-10 00:00 Lagt besked til RLI at ringe 14-10-2014 13:06 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 14-10 00:00 test"

groups = re.split(r' (?=\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4})', test_string)

for group in groups:
    print(group)

If I run the given example in python2.7 I get

 python multipe_dates.py 
  File "multipe_dates.py", line 3
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xc3' in file multipe_dates.py on line 3, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

If I run this with python3 it works by default

python3 multipe_dates.py 
05-01-2015 12:27 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Fangede RLI på hans mobil. Ring igen kl. 15
19-11-2014 11:17 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00 Gik på svarer igen og lagt besked til RLI at ringe tilbage.
12-11-2014 09:38 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 13-11 00:00
12-11-2014 09:32 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 15-10 00:00 Forsøgt RLI igen og lagt besked om han vil ringe.
14-10-2014 13:14 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 15-10 00:00
14-10-2014 13:10 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 14-10 00:00 Lagt besked til RLI at ringe
14-10-2014 13:06 - KH - (KH) Igangværende - Opringning - 14-10 00:00 test

If you add

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

to the top of your py file it'll work in python2

Yes. When Idle suggested to add that , i edited my code. Thanks. — Şansal Birbaş, Jun 23 '15 at 20:30

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 23 '15 at 20:14

1

you could use this pattern

(\d\d-\d\d-\d{4}.*?)(?=\d\d-\d\d-\d{4}|$)

Demo

answered Jun 23 '15 at 20:14

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Parsing String according to Dates in Python

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