Python - How to split a string by non alpha characters

Question

I'm trying to use python to parse lines of c++ source code. The only thing I am interested in is include directives.

    #include "header.hpp"

I want it to be flexible and still work with poor coding styles like:

          #   include"header.hpp"  

I have gotten to the point where I can read lines and trim whitespace before and after the #. However I still need to find out what directive it is by reading the string until a non-alpha character is encountered regardless of weather it is a space, quote, tab or angled bracket.

So basically my question is: How can I split a string starting with alphas until a non alpha is encountered?

I think I might be able to do this with regex, but I have not found anything in the documentation that looks like what I want.

Also if anyone has advice on how I would get the file name inside the quotes or angled brackets that would be a plus.

Answer 1

Your instinct on using regex is correct.

import re
re.split('[^a-zA-Z]', string_to_split)

The [^a-zA-Z] part means "not alphabetic characters".

Answer 2

You can do that with a regex. However, you can also use a simple while loop.

def splitnonalpha(s):
   pos = 1
   while pos < len(s) and s[pos].isalpha():
      pos+=1
   return (s[:pos], s[pos:])

Test:

>>> splitnonalpha('#include"blah.hpp"')
('#include', '"blah.hpp"')