dear readers,
given a string, suppose i wanted to do the following:
- replace all periods with colons, except for periods with a digit to the right and left of it.
for example, given: '375 mi. south of U.C.B. is 3.4 degrees warmer'
would be changed to: "375 mi: south of U:C:B: is 3.4 degrees warmer'
i was thinking that a regular expression might do the trick. here's what i tried:
!----------------------------------------------------------------------!
Python 2.4.1c1
[GCC 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-49)] on linux2
>>> import re
>>> pattern = re.compile(r'(?!\d)[.](?!\d)')
>>> pattern.sub(':', '375 mi. south of U.C.B is 3.4 degrees warmer.')
'375 mi: south of U:C:B is 3.4 degrees warmer:'
!----------------------------------------------------------------------!
so this works, but not in the following case:
!----------------------------------------------------------------------!
>>> pattern.sub(':', '.3')
'.3'
!----------------------------------------------------------------------!but going the other direction works:
!----------------------------------------------------------------------!
>>> pattern.sub(':', '3.')
'3:'
!----------------------------------------------------------------------!any thoughts?
thanks, aaron -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
