Python parse data with regular expressions turn into dictionary.

Question

I have a string of data. I would like to turn it into a dictionary

ff = '{wrapper:{one:{now:""},up:"north",down:"south"}}'

Notice that the keys are not text wrappered with ' or ". Can regex help do this? The new text should look like below. If pandas can do this, I could use pandas.

ff = '{"wrapper":{"one":{"now":""},"up":"north","down":"south"}}' 

Answer 1

use a lookaround:

(?<={).*?(?=:)

where

(?<={)    - match { before
.*?       - non greedy
(?=:)    - match : after

So in code it would be..

import re
import json

str = '{wrapper:{one:{now:""},up:"north",down:"south"}}'
str = re.sub('(?<=[{,])(.*?)(?=:)', r'"\1"', str)
jsonobj = json.loads(str)
print jsonobj