On Jun 18, 7:12 am, korean_dave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How can i use the find() function on a string that is composed of tons > of symbols that cause errors... > > THis is my string: > > find("<html><head><meta name="qrichtext" content="1" /><style > type="text/css">p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }</style></head><body > style=" font-family:'MS Shell Dlg 2'; font-size:8.25pt; font-weight: > 400; font-style:normal; text-decoration:none;"><p style=" margin-top: > 0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block- > indent:0; text-indent:0px; font-size:8pt;"><span style=" font-size: > 10pt; color:green;">Connected!</span></p></body></html>","margin") > > The tough part about this is that the string is dynamically produced. > So I can't manually go into the string and eliminate the quote-marks > or to "literal-character" them.
If as you say the string is dynamically created, your script should have a variable name for it e.g. dynstr so all you have to do is: dynstr.find("margin") Note: you should be using str methods (see http://docs.python.org/lib/string-methods.html); almost all functionality in the string module is now deprecated and redirected (slowly) e.g. def find(s, t): return s.find(t) If you really want/need to put such a monster string containing both ' and " as a literal in your script, you can use triple quotes (""" or '''). I.e. find("""<html><head><meta name="qrichtext" ... </span></p></body></ html>""", "margin") See http://docs.python.org/tut/node5.html#SECTION005120000000000000000 HTH, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list