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pythonregexpascalcasing

Looking for Regex pattern to return similar results to my current function


I have some pascal-cased text that I'm trying to split into separate tokens/words. For example, "Hello123AIIsCool" would become ["Hello", "123", "AI", "Is", "Cool"].

Some Conditions

  • "Words" will always start with an upper-cased letter. E.g., "Hello"
  • A contiguous sequence of numbers should be left together. E.g., "123" -> ["123"], not ["1", "2", "3"]
  • A contiguous sequence of upper-cased letters should be kept together except when the last letter is the start to a new word as defined in the first condition. E.g., "ABCat" -> ["AB", "Cat"], not ["ABC", "at"]
  • There is no guarantee that each condition will have a match in a string. E.g., "Hello", "HelloAI", "HelloAIIsCool" "Hello123", "123AI", "AIIsCool", and any other combination I haven't provided are potential candidates.

I've tried a couple regex variations. The following two attempts got me pretty close to what I want, but not quite.

Version 0

import re

def extract_v0(string: str) -> list[str]:
    word_pattern = r"[A-Z][a-z]*"
    num_pattern = r"\d+"
    pattern = f"{word_pattern}|{num_pattern}"
    extracts: list[str] = re.findall(
        pattern=pattern, string=string
    )
    return extracts

string = "Hello123AIIsCool"
extract_v0(string)
['Hello', '123', 'A', 'I', 'Is', 'Cool']

Version 1

import re

def extract_v1(string: str) -> list[str]:
    word_pattern = r"[A-Z][a-z]+"
    num_pattern = r"\d+"
    upper_pattern = r"[A-Z][^a-z]*"
    pattern = f"{word_pattern}|{num_pattern}|{upper_pattern}"
    extracts: list[str] = re.findall(
        pattern=pattern, string=string
    )
    return extracts

string = "Hello123AIIsCool"
extract_v1(string)
['Hello', '123', 'AII', 'Cool']

Best Option So Far

This uses a combination of regex and looping. It works, but is this the best solution? Or is there some fancy regex that can do it?

import re

def extract_v2(string: str) -> list[str]:
    word_pattern = r"[A-Z][a-z]+"
    num_pattern = r"\d+"
    upper_pattern = r"[A-Z][A-Z]*"
    groups = []
    for pattern in [word_pattern, num_pattern, upper_pattern]:
        while string.strip():
            group = re.search(pattern=pattern, string=string)
            if group is not None:
                groups.append(group)
                string = string[:group.start()] + " " + string[group.end():]
            else:
                break
    
    ordered = sorted(groups, key=lambda g: g.start())
    return [grp.group() for grp in ordered]

string = "Hello123AIIsCool"
extract_v2(string)
['Hello', '123', 'AI', 'Is', 'Cool']

Solution

  • Based on your Version 1:

    import re
    
    
    def extract_v1(string: str) -> list[str]:
        word_pattern = r"[A-Z][a-z]+"
        num_pattern = r"\d+"
        upper_pattern = r"[A-Z]+(?![a-z])"  # Fixed
        pattern = f"{word_pattern}|{num_pattern}|{upper_pattern}"
        extracts: list[str] = re.findall(
            pattern=pattern, string=string
        )
        return extracts
    
    
    string = "Hello123AIIsCool"
    extract_v1(string)
    

    Result:

    ['Hello', '123', 'AI', 'Is', 'Cool']
    

    The fixed upper_pattern will match as many uppercased letters as possible, and will stop one before a lowercased letter if it exists.