Split a string by a delimiter in python

Question

How to split this string where __ is the delimiter

MATCHES__STRING

To get an output of [\'MATCHES\', \'STRING\']?

Answer 1

You can use the str.split function: string.split('__')

>>> "MATCHES__STRING".split("__")
['MATCHES', 'STRING']

Answer 2

You may be interested in the csv module, which is designed for comma-separated files but can be easily modified to use a custom delimiter.

import csv
csv.register_dialect( "myDialect", delimiter = "__", <other-options> )
lines = [ "MATCHES__STRING" ]

for row in csv.reader( lines ):
    ...

Answer 3

When you have two or more (in the example below there're three) elements in the string, then you can use comma to separate these items:

date, time, event_name = ev.get_text(separator='@').split("@")

After this line of code, the three variables will have values from three parts of the variable ev

So, if the variable ev contains this string and we apply separator '@':

Sa., 23. März@19:00@Klavier + Orchester: SPEZIAL

Then, after split operation the variable

• date will have value "Sa., 23. März"
• time will have value "19:00"
• event_name will have value "Klavier + Orchester: SPEZIAL"