How to split at spaces and commas in Python?

Question

I've been looking around here, but I didn't find anything that was close to my problem. I'm using Python3. I want to split a string at every whitespace and at commas. Here is what I got now, but I am getting some weird output: (Don't worry, the sentence is translated from German)

    import re
    sentence = "We eat, Granny" 
    split = re.split(r'(\s|\,)', sentence.strip())
    print (split)

    >>>['We', ' ', 'eat', ',', '', ' ', 'Granny']

What I actually want to have is:

    >>>['We', ' ', 'eat', ',', ' ', 'Granny']

The comma looks very important here :), but you do not need to escape it — Wiktor Stribiżew, Nov 18 '16 at 11:21
See [Why are empty strings returned in split() results?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/2197451/2564301) for some more on those empty strings. — Jongware, Nov 18 '16 at 11:22
indeed the comma is important (in german) otherwise you eat granny :), Thanks Rad Lexus,i will have look — Vincent van Munky, Nov 18 '16 at 11:25

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 18 '16 at 11:29

3

I'd go for findall instead of split and just match all the desired contents, like

import re
sentence = "We eat, Granny" 
print(re.findall(r'\s|,|[^,\s]+', sentence))

answered Nov 18 '16 at 11:29

Sebastian Proske

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yes that perfectly works! eventhough i dont understand whats the difference in my attempt! Thanks! – Vincent van Munky Nov 18 '16 at 11:39
The main difference is the use of `findall` instead of `split`. – Sebastian Proske Nov 18 '16 at 11:48

Vaulstein · Answer 2 · 2023-01-27T06:48:30.427

0

Alternate way:

import re
sentence = "We eat, Granny"
split = [a for a in re.split(r'(\s|\,)', sentence.strip()) if a]

Output:

['We', ' ', 'eat', ',', ' ', 'Granny']

Works with both python 2.7 and 3

edited Jan 27 '23 at 06:48

answered Nov 18 '16 at 11:22

Vaulstein

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your proposal yields: ['We', 'eat', '', 'Granny'] – Vincent van Munky Nov 18 '16 at 11:26
It returns the same output as what you asked for, for me – Vaulstein Jan 27 '23 at 06:45

zipa · Answer 3 · 2016-11-18T11:43:08.987

0

This should work for you:

 import re
 sentence = "We eat, Granny" 
 split = list(filter(None, re.split(r'(\s|\,)', sentence.strip())))
 print (split)

edited Nov 18 '16 at 11:43

answered Nov 18 '16 at 11:27

zipa

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it somehow yields: – Vincent van Munky Nov 18 '16 at 11:40

How to split at spaces and commas in Python?

3 Answers3

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