Parsing String with Python

Question

How can I parse a string ['FED590498'] in python, so than I can get all numeric values 590498 and chars FED separately.

Some Samples:

['ICIC889150']
['FED889150']
['MFL541606']

and [ ] is not part of string...

Answer 1

If the number of letters is variable, it's easiest to use a regular expression:

import re

characters, numbers = re.search(r'([A-Z]+)(\d+)', inputstring).groups()

This assumes that:

• The letters are uppercase ASCII
• There is at least 1 character, and 1 digit in each input string.

You can lock the pattern down further by using {3, 4} instead of + to limit repetition to just 3 or 4 instead of at least 1, etc.

Demo:

>>> import re
>>> inputstring = 'FED590498'
>>> characters, numbers = re.search(r'([A-Z]+)(\d+)', inputstring).groups()
>>> characters
'FED'
>>> numbers
'590498'