how to split a string after a specific character?

Question

I want to split a list of items with specific symbol.

I have used the following code

data = "launch,  7:30am,  watch tv,  workout,  snap,  running,  research study and learn"
items = data.split(',')
print(', '.join([items[0], items[-1].split('—')[1]]))

Here what I wanted is that to split this data and print like this:

launch, study and learn

but a problem appears when data changed like this:

data = "launch, 7:30am, watch tv, workout, snap, running, research — discussion, study and learn"
items = data.split(',')
print(', '.join([items[0], items[-1].split('—')[1]]))

and in this I case I expected to get this result:

launch, discussion, study and learn

as such, an error appears "list index out of range"! that is right because there is no symbol "-" after last element, because of "," and I instructed data to be splitted as "," therefore in "discussion, study and learn" will be treated as separate data so an error appears. I wanted to not rewrite any code, is it possible to use code reuse to read both data. is it possible to read after "-" symbol?

Answer 1

Seems like your expected output is dependent on word research

We can implement the same using regex which will search research word and gives you characters after it.

You can try this -

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import re
(re.split(r'*research[^A-Za-z0-9]+',data))[-1]
#study and learn
#discussion, study and learn

Full Code:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import re
print ("{0}, {1}".format(data.split(',')[0], (re.split(r' *research[^A-Za-z0-9]+',data))[-1]))
#launch, study and learn
#launch, discussion, study and learn

Read more about python Regex :

https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html

or about expressions here :

https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_regex.asp