How to split line at non-printing ascii character in Python

Question

How can I split a line in Python at a non-printing ascii character (such as the long minus sign hex 0x97 , Octal 227)? I won't need the character itself. The information after it will be saved as a variable.

Answer 1

You can use re.split .

>>> import re
>>> re.split('\W+', 'Words, words, words.')
['Words', 'words', 'words', '']

Adjust the pattern to only include the characters you want to keep.

See also: stripping-non-printable-characters-from-a-string-in-python

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Example (w/ the long minus):

>>> # \xe2\x80\x93 represents a long dash (or long minus)
>>> s = 'hello – world'
>>> s
'hello \xe2\x80\x93 world'
>>> import re
>>> re.split("\xe2\x80\x93", s)
['hello ', ' world']

Or, the same with unicode:

>>> # \u2013 represents a long dash, long minus or so called en-dash
>>> s = u'hello – world'
>>> s
u'hello \u2013 world'
>>> import re
>>> re.split(u"\u2013", s)
[u'hello ', u' world']

Answer 2

_, _, your_result= your_input_string.partition('\x97')

or

your_result= your_input_string.partition('\x97')[2]

If your_input_string does not contain a '\\x97' , then your_result will be empty. If your_input_string contains multiple '\\x97' characters, your_result will contain everything after the first '\\x97' character, including other '\\x97' characters.

Answer 3

Just use the string/unicode split method (They don't really care about the string you split upon (other than it is a constant. If you want to use a Regex then use re.split)

To get the split string either escape it like the other people have shown "\\x97"

or

use chr(0x97) for strings (0-255) or unichr(0x97) for unicode

so an example would be

'will not be split'.split(chr(0x97))

'will be split here:\x97 and this is the second string'.split(chr(0x97))