I am trying to parse data that looks like this: IDENTIFIER TIMESTAMP T C RESOURCE_NAME DESCRIPTION 2BFA76F6 1208230607 T S SYSPROC SYSTEM SHUTDOWN BY USER A6D1BD62 1215230807 I H Firmware Event
My problem is that sometimes there is a RESOURCE_NAME and sometimes not, so I wind up with "Firmware" as my RESOURCE_NAME and "Event" as my DESCRIPTION. The formating seems to use a set number of spaces. I have tried making RESOURCE_NAME an Optional(Word(alphanums))) and Description OneOrMore(Word(alphas) + LineEnd(). So the question is, how can I avoid having the first word of Description sucked into RESOURCE_NAME when that field should be blank? The data I have has a fixed number of characters per field, so I could split it up that way, but wouldn't that defeat the purpose of using a parser? I am determined to become proficient with pyparsing so I am using it even when it could be considered overkill; thus, it has gone past mere utility now, this is a matter of principle! thanks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
