[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hey there, > i have a text file with a bunch of values scattered throughout it. > i am needing to pull out a value that is in parenthesis right after a > certain word, > like the first time the word 'foo' is found, retrieve the values in the > next set of parenthesis (bar) and it would return 'bar' > > i think i can use re to do this, but is there some easier way? > thanks
well, you can use string.find with offsets, but an re is probably a cleaner way to go. I'm not sure which way is faster - it'll depend on how many times you're searching compared to the overhead of setting up an re. start = textfile.find("foo(") + 4 # 4 being how long 'foo(' is end = textfile.find(")", start) value = textfile[start:end] Iain -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list