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Next: 1.7.3 Substituting Up: 1.7 Regular expressions Previous: 1.7.1 Matching   Contents   Index

1.7.2 Splitting

Sometimes it is desirable to split a string into pieces, such as when dealing with a comma-delimited file:

`Jason Evans, jasone@canonware.com, http://www.canonware.com/~jasone/'

`,\s*' split
1 sprint

This generates the following output:

[`Jason Evans' `jasone@canonware.com' `http://www.canonware.com/~jasone/']

If for some reason preserving the delimiters is important, capturing parentheses can be added to the splitting pattern:

`Jason Evans, jasone@canonware.com, http://www.canonware.com/~jasone/'

`(,)\s*' split
1 sprint

This generates the following output:

[`Jason Evans' `,' `jasone@canonware.com' `,' `http://www.canonware.com/~jasone/']



Jason Evans 2005-03-16