In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> The code
>
> for text in open("file.txt","r"):
> print text.replace("foo","bar")[:-1]
>
> replaces 'foo' with 'bar' in a file, but how do I avoid changing text
> inside single or double quotes? For making changes to Python code, I
> would also like to avoid changing text in comments, either the '#' or
> '""" ... """' kind.
The first part of what you describe isn't too bad, here's some code that
seems to do what you want:
import re
def replace_unquoted(text, src, dst, quote = '"'):
r = re.compile(r'%s([^\\%s]|\\[\\%s])*%s' %
(quote, quote, quote, quote))
out = '' ; last_pos = 0
for m in r.finditer(text):
out += text[last_pos:m.start()].replace(src, dst)
out += m.group()
last_pos = m.end()
return out + text[last_pos:].replace(src, dst)
Example usage:
print replace_unquoted(file('foo.txt', 'r').read(),
"foo", "bar")
It's not the most elegant solution in the world. This code does NOT
deal with the problem of commented text. I think it will handle triple
quotes, though I haven't tested it on that case.
At any rate, I hope it may help you get started.
Cheers,
-M
--
Michael J. Fromberger | Lecturer, Dept. of Computer Science
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sting/ | Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
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