Place a comma in a string before value in parenthesis

Question

I have a string of names that is comma delimited and some of the names have an abbreviation after such as the following:

"major league baseball, national football league (nfl), major league soccer" ...

I want to place a comma before the parenthesis (before any opening parenthesis) so I can use string split. I tried using the following regex but doesn't quite do what I want.

result = re.split(",()", result)

I think this initial way worked as well, I realized there's a problem with my string (for some reason there are commas just after all opening parenthesis) and causing behavior I didn't expect — nick, Nov 02 '17 at 16:35

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 02 '17 at 16:29

Use replace instead of a regex:

In [1]: s = "major league baseball, national football league (nfl), major league soccer (mls)"

In [2]: s.replace('(', ',(').split(',')
Out[2]:
['major league baseball',
 ' national football league ',
 '(nfl)',
 ' major league soccer ',
 '(mls)']

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 23 '18 at 15:28

1

You want to do this before split:

result = result.replace(' (', ', ').replace(')', '')
#"major league baseball, national football league, nfl, major league soccer"

edited Apr 23 '18 at 15:28

halfer

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answered Nov 02 '17 at 16:31

zipa

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this will remove the parenthesis. Is that what the question is asking for? – Cyzanfar Nov 02 '17 at 16:32
1

Not quite asked for, but it is good thinking and I was going to do remove all parenthesis anyway – nick Nov 02 '17 at 16:34

Place a comma in a string before value in parenthesis

2 Answers2