split values in list based on multiple separators python

Question

I have a string in a list. I want to split values based on my separator. I don't wanna use any regex expression. regex performs it in a single operation. but i want to use for loops and split() functions to achieve it. How to make it possible. Here's my code:

aa = ['prinec-how,are_you&&smile#isfine1']

separator = ["-",",","_","&","#"]
l1 = []

for sep in separator:
    for i in aa:
        #print("i:",i)
        split_list = i.split(sep)
        aa = split_list
        print("aa:",aa)
        #print("split_list:",split_list)
    l1 =l1 + split_list
print(l1)

Required output:

['prinec','how','are','you','smile','isfine1']

Answer 1

Using str.replace and str.split()

Ex:

aa = ['prinec-how,are_you&&smile#isfine1']
separator = ["-",",","_","&","#"]

for i in aa:
    for sep in separator:
        i = i.replace(sep, " ")
    print(i.split())

Output:

['prinec', 'how', 'are', 'you', 'smile', 'isfine1']

Answer 2

Intead of using a regular expression (which would be the sensible thing to do here), you could eg use itertools.groupby to group characters by whether they are separators or not, and then keep those groups that are not.

aa = ['prinec-how,are_you&&smile#isfine1']
separator = ["-",",","_","&","#"]

from itertools import groupby
res = [''.join(g) for k, g in groupby(aa[0], key=separator.__contains__) if not k]
# res: ['prinec', 'how', 'are', 'you', 'smile', 'isfine1']

As I understand your approach, you want to iteratively split the strings in the list by the different separators and add their parts back to the list. This way, it also makes sense for aa to be a list initially holding a single string. You could do this much easier with a list comprehension, replacing aa with a new list holding the words from the previous aa split by the next separator:

aa = ['prinec-how,are_you&&smile#isfine1']
separator = ["-",",","_","&","#"]

for s in separator:
     aa = [x for a in aa for x in a.split(s) if x]
# aa: ['prinec', 'how', 'are', 'you', 'smile', 'isfine1']

Answer 3

using regex

import re
a=re.compile(r'[^-,_&#]+')

ST = 'prinec-how,are_you&&smile#isfine1'
b=a.findall(ST)
print(b)
"""
output

['prinec', 'how', 'are', 'you', 'smile', 'isfine1']

"""

USING for loop

aa = ['prinec-how,are_you&&smile#isfine1','prinec-how,are_you&&smile#isfi-ne1']

separator = ["-",",","_","&","#"]

for i in range(len(aa)):
    j =aa[i]
    for sep in separator:
        j = j.replace(sep, ' ')
    aa[i]=j.split()

print(aa)    

OUTPUT

   [['prinec', 'how', 'are', 'you', 'smile', 'isfine1'], ['prinec', 'how', 'are', 'you', 'smile', 'isfi', 'ne1']]