On Apr 7, 9:36 pm, Grant Edwards <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote: > On 2010-04-08, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:> On Apr 7, 4:47?pm, > Grant Edwards <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote: > >> On 2010-04-07, J <dreadpiratej...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> > Can someone make me un-crazy? > > >> Definitely. ?Regex is driving you crazy, so don't use a regex. > > >> ? inputString = "# 1 ?Short offline ? ? ? Completed without error ? ? 00% > >> ? ? ? 679 ? ? ? ? -" > > >> ? print ' '.join(inputString.split()[4:-3]) > > [...] > > > OK, fine. Post a better solution to this problem than: > > >>>> import re > >>>> re.split(' {2,}', '# 1 Short offline Completed without error > >>>> 00%') > > ['# 1', 'Short offline', 'Completed without error', '00%'] > > OK, I'll bite: what's wrong with the solution I already posted? > > -- > Grant
Sorry, my eyes completely missed your one-liner, so my criticism about not posting a solution was unwarranted. I don't think you and I read the problem the same way (which is probably why I didn't notice your solution -- because it wasn't solving the problem I thought I saw). When I saw "And I am interested in the string that appears in the third column, which changes as the test runs and then completes" I assumed that, not only could that string change, but so could the one before it. I guess my base assumption that anything with words in it could change. I was looking at the OP's attempt at a solution, and he obviously felt he needed to see two or more spaces as an item delimiter. (And I got testy because of seeing other IMO unwarranted denigration of re on the list lately.) Regards, Pat -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list