Split strings based on multiple delimiters while retaining them as well

Question

I am entering 5 sentences and need them to split using multiple delimiters(,/!/?)

Unfortunately while writing the code I considered only letters and put these delimiters and used .split(). It was working fine then.

this was the code:

final_text = ''
split_one = ''
input_text = input("Enter the data: ")
count_d = input_text.count("!") + input_text.count("?") + input_text.count(".")

if count_d == 5:
            final_text = input_text
            final_text = final_text.replace('!', '! ').replace('?', '? ').replace('.', '. ')
            split_one = final_text.split()
            i = 0
            while True:
                print(split_one[i])
                i += 1
                if i == 5:
                    break

For an input of : a.b?c!d.f!

The output was 
a.
b?
c!
d.
f!

But I actually am entering sentences and not letters. E.g

hi.how are you? I am good! what about you?bye!

It gives me:

 hi.
 how
 are
 you?
 I

Instead of

hi.
how are you?
I am good!
what about you?
bye!

What can I do to avoid the split due to white spaces and get it only for the delimiters? (,/./!)

PS: I am not to use any external packages. Version is 3.6

Possible duplicate of [Split Strings with Multiple Delimiters?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1059559/split-strings-with-multiple-delimiters) — AChampion, Mar 25 '17 at 01:33
@AChampion I am not sure I found a case there when one is entering a sequence of sentences with whitespaces between words and is to split using multiple delimiters while retaining the spaces between words. — uzhy, Mar 25 '17 at 02:01

AChampion · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-25T03:37:40.263

2

You can use itertools.groupby to split the string by the punctuation, e.g.:

>>> import itertools as it
>>> s = 'hi.how are you? I am good! what about you?bye!'
>>> r = [''.join(v).strip() for k, v in it.groupby(s, lambda c: c in '.!?')]
>>> r
['hi', '.', 'how are you', '?', 'I am good', '!', 'what about you', '?', 'bye', '!']
>>> for sentence, punct in zip(*[iter(r)]*2):
...     print(sentence + punct)
hi.
how are you?
I am good!
what about you?
bye!

If you don't care about the punctuation then you can use:

>>> [''.join(v).strip() for k, v in it.groupby(s, lambda c: c in '.!?') if not k]
['hi', 'how are you', 'I am good', 'what about you', 'bye']

edited Mar 25 '17 at 03:37

answered Mar 25 '17 at 02:36

AChampion

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Kind Sir , thank you for your reply. I am still a beginner in python.Would you mind telling me what should I do with itertools.groupby ? If its a function , I wont be able to write it as I have just started to learn. Is it a built in library package? Also I am not allowed to external packages. – uzhy Mar 25 '17 at 02:56
It is part of the standard library `import itertools` as a convenience I often give it a shorter name `import itertools as it`. – AChampion Mar 25 '17 at 03:38
Fabulous ! Works like a charm. Thanks a lot for helping me out Sir. Have a good day ! – uzhy Mar 25 '17 at 03:45

Split strings based on multiple delimiters while retaining them as well

1 Answers1