How do I split a string into an array of characters in python?

Question

I have a variable like this:

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"

And I want the end result to be like this:

bug = ["url1.com","url2.com","url3.com","url4.com"]

I tried:

#!/usr/bin/python

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
bug = bug.split(";")
print bug

But it outputs:

['^bug:url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com^']

Please note that the variable bug consists of a bunch of URLs not just ordinary words, maybe with regex ? I don't know sorry I'm still new to programming, please help me fix this.

If you want to cut off ^bug: from the beginning and ^ from the end, write bug = bug[5:-1] and then split with bug.split(';') — khelwood
– khelwood, Commented May 12, 2017 at 13:29
That's not an array of characters; it's an array of strings. — Chris
– Chris, Commented May 12, 2017 at 14:01
Does this answer your question? How to split a string into an array of characters in Python? — TylerH
– TylerH, Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 15:14

timgeb · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-12 13:55:42Z

2

I think the existing answers are too complicated for this simple task so I'm posting my comment as an answer:

>>> bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
>>> bug[5:-1].split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

You slice the unwanted characters from the beginning and end of your string and afterwards you split the string by your delimiter ;. Of course, if there's anything dynamic about the format of your string, e.g. it could start with '^someunwantedtext:', then use a regular expression.

answered May 12, 2017 at 13:55

timgeb

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3 Comments

Nuageux Over a year ago

Problem is "the variable bug consists of a bunch of URLs not just ordinary words" so bug might not be always of the same size. Your solution will only work if you know the length of URLs which if I understand well is not the case here.

timgeb Over a year ago

@Nuageux no, this solution is independent from the length of the urls. You discard the first 5 and the last character from the string. What's in between does not matter.

Nuageux Over a year ago

My mistake you are right. I misunderstood some part of the question. I thought that "bug" could be something else that just "bug". I'm not a native english speaker, sorry.

Nuageux · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-12 13:34:23Z

0

First, split to remove part before ':' and to remove part after '^'. Then split for each ';'

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
bug = bug.split(":")[1:][0].split("^")[:-1][0]
bug = bug.split(";")
print bug
# ['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

answered May 12, 2017 at 13:34

Nuageux

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Comments

Nuageux · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-12 13:41:34Z

0

You could use lstrip() and rstrip(). This way you could even have ^ and bug inside the url and it won't be stripped.

bug = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
buglist = bug.lstrip("^bug").lstrip(":").rstrip("^").split(";")

Output: ['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

edited May 12, 2017 at 13:41

Nuageux

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answered May 12, 2017 at 13:38

L.S.

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Comments

Keerthana Prabhakaran · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-12 13:59:54Z

0

You can actually use regex for this purpose! replace the bug and special character in your data and split the urls with ;

import re
bug = "^hi.com;hi.com:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
print re.sub(r'((\w+.com;?)*:)|\^','',bug).split(';')

Output:

['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

edited May 12, 2017 at 13:59

answered May 12, 2017 at 13:51

Keerthana Prabhakaran

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Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:10:32Z

0

A combination of replace and split does the job:

>>> s = "^bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com^"
>>> s.replace('^','').replace('bug:','').split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

Step-by-step explanation

>>> s.replace('^','')
'bug:url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com'
>>> s.replace('^','').replace('bug:','')
'url1.com;url2.com;url3.com;url4.com'
>>> s.replace('^','').replace('bug:','').split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']
>>>

A better solution

As timgeb mentioned my method fails if the urls contain the string "bug:". timgeb's solution (https://stackoverflow.com/a/43939538/2194843) seems to be fine:

>>> s[5:-1].split(';')
['url1.com', 'url2.com', 'url3.com', 'url4.com']

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:10

CommunityBot

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answered May 12, 2017 at 14:01

funk

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1 Comment

timgeb Over a year ago

Will fail if any url contains the substring 'bug:'.

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