How to capture all regex groups in one regex?

Question

Given a file like this:

# For more information about CC-CEDICT see:
# http://cc-cedict.org/wiki/
A A [A] /(slang) (Tw) to steal/
AA制 AA制 [A A zhi4] /to split the bill/to go Dutch/
AB制 AB制 [A B zhi4] /to split the bill (where the male counterpart foots the larger portion of the sum)/(theater) a system where two actors take turns in acting the main role, with one actor replacing the other if either is unavailable/
A咖 A咖 [A ka1] /class "A"/top grade/
A圈兒 A圈儿 [A quan1 r5] /at symbol, @/
A片 A片 [A pian4] /adult movie/pornography/

I want to build a json object that:

• skip lines that starts with #
• breaks lines into 4 parts
  1. tradition character (spans from start ^ until the next space)
  2. simplified character (spans from the first space to the second)
  3. pinyin (spans between the square brackets [...])
  4. the gloss space between the first / till the last / (note there are cases where there can be slashes within the gloss, e.g. /adult movie/pornography/

I am currently doing it as such:

>>> for line in text.split('\n'):
...     if line.startswith('#'): continue;
...     line = line.strip()
...     simple, _, line = line.partition(' ')
...     trad, _, line = line.partition(' ')
...     print simple, trad
... 
A A
AA制 AA制
AB制 AB制
A咖 A咖
A圈兒 A圈儿
A片 A片

To get the [...], I had to do:

>>> import re
>>> line = "A片 A片 [A pian4] /adult movie/pornography/"
>>> simple, _, line = line.partition(' ')
>>> trad, _, line = line.partition(' ')
>>> re.findall(r'\[.*\]', line)[0].strip('[]')
'A pian4'

And to find the /.../, I had to do:

>>> line = "A片 A片 [A pian4] /adult movie/pornography/"
>>> re.findall(r'\/.*\/$', line)[0].strip('/')
'adult movie/pornography'

How do I use regex groups to catch all of them at once which doing multiple partitions/splits/findall?

Answer 1

I could extract the info using regular expressions instead. This way, you can catch blocks in groups and then handle them as desired:

import re

with open("myfile") as f:
    data = f.read().split('\n')
    for line in data:
        if line.startswith('#'): continue
        m = re.search(r"^([^ ]*) ([^ ]*) \[([^]]*)\] \/(.*)\/$", line)
        if m:
            print(m.groups())

That is regular expression splits the string in the following groups:

^([^ ]*) ([^ ]*) \[([^]]*)\] \/(.*)\/$
  ^^^^^   ^^^^^     ^^^^^       ^^
   1)      2)        3)         4)

That is:

1. the first word.

2. the second word.

3. the text within [ and ].

4. the text from / up to the / before the end of the line.

It returns:

('A', 'A', 'A', '(slang) (Tw) to steal')
('AA制', 'AA制', 'A A zhi4', 'to split the bill/to go Dutch')
('AB制', 'AB制', 'A B zhi4', 'to split the bill (where the male counterpart foots the larger portion of the sum)/(theater) a system where two actors take turns in acting the main role, with one actor replacing the other if either is unavailable')
('A咖', 'A咖', 'A ka1', 'class "A"/top grade')
('A圈兒', 'A圈儿', 'A quan1 r5', 'at symbol, @')
('A片', 'A片', 'A pian4', 'adult movie/pornography')