Python: Display all options of a Unix wildcarded string with square brackets (reverse glob/fnmatch)

Question

I have a large dataset with rows of wildcarded strings e.g.

8145[012]
8146[01234]
8147[0134567]

I would like an efficient way to expand these out into unique rows for each combination, e.g.

What is the most efficient way to do this in Python 3.7?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 13 '20 at 22:21

Use a regex to parse the wildcards, then iterate:


import re

data = ['8145[012]', '8146[01234]', '8147[0134567]']

for wildcard in data:
    base, combos = re.search(r'(\d+)\[(\d+)\]', wildcard).groups()
    for combo in combos:
        print(base + combo)

Output:

Python: Display all options of a Unix wildcarded string with square brackets (reverse glob/fnmatch)

1 Answers1