Tim Daneliuk <tun...@tundraware.com> writes: > Here's the problem: Determine is the string S appears *outside* or > *inside* any such quotation.
This is a problem for parsing text. There is no general, simple solution. If someone tries to convince you they have one, be highly suspicious: it will either be not general, or not simple, or neither simple nor general. > I know lots of ugly/complicated/heavyweight ways to solve this, but > I'm wondering if any of you geniuses have a pythonic/elegant/short > algo that solves this. I would recommend one of the following, in descending order of preference: * Try very hard to change the requirements so that the input must be in a mature well-known format for which there are *existing*, maintained, reliable parsers. Use those instead of rolling your own. * If that fails, then: Try very hard to drastically simplify the specified input format so that every possible input is either obviously invalid, or obviously has exactly one meaning. * If that fails, then: Bite the bullet and acknowledge you will be entering the complexities of parsing text. Use a mature library for writing your parser; don't attempt to write a parsing library yourself. *This is the worst option*; changing the requirements for input will be much less pain than this. -- \ “Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into | `\ hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.” –Jesus, as quoted in Luke | _o__) 12:5 | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list