Extract substring between specific characters

Question

I have some strings like:

\i{}Agrostis\i0{} <L.>

I would like to get rid of the '\i{}', '\io{}' characters, so that I could get just:

Agrostis <L.>

I've tried the following code (adapted from here):

m = re.search('\i{}(.+?)\i0', item_name)
if m:
   name = m.group(1).strip('\\')
else:
   name = item_name

It works in part, because when I run it I get just:

Agrostis

without the

<L.>

part (which I want to keep).

Any hints?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide!

Are you sure the `\i{}` and `\io{}` substrings occur exactly once in the string, with the first always coming before the second? — Rory Daulton, Jun 18 '16 at 14:52

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 18 '16 at 14:47

2

Use s.replace('\i{}', '') and s.replace('\io{}', '')

edited Jun 18 '16 at 14:47

Moses Koledoye

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answered Jun 18 '16 at 14:47

Julien Goupy

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 18 '16 at 14:52

1

You ca do this in different ways.

The simplest one is to use str.replace

s = '''\i{}Agrostis\i0{} <L.>'''
s2 = s.replace('''\i{}''', '').replace('''\i0{}''', '')

Another way is to use re.sub()

answered Jun 18 '16 at 14:52

dimm

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 18 '16 at 14:53

1

You need to use the re.sub function.

In [34]: import re

In [35]: s = "\i{}Agrostis\i0{} <L.>"

In [36]: re.sub(r'\\i\d*{}', '', s)
Out[36]: 'Agrostis <L.>'

answered Jun 18 '16 at 14:53

styvane

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 18 '16 at 15:13

1

You could use a character class along with re.sub()

import re
regex = r'\\i[\d{}]+'
string = "\i{}Agrostis\i0{} <L.>"

string = re.sub(regex, '', string)
print string

See a demo on ideone.com.

answered Jun 18 '16 at 15:13

Jan

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 18 '16 at 14:53

You can either use s.replace('\i{}', '') and s.replace('\io{}', ''), as Julien said, or, continuing with the regex approach, change your pattern to:

re.search('\i{}(.+?)\i0(.++)', item_name)

And use m.group(1).strip('\\') + m.group(2).strip('\\') as the result.

Extract substring between specific characters

5 Answers5