extract text between a[- and -] using python - regex

Question

I am writing a script to extract data from a file and split the data to multiple files contents for each file is split by 5 "#"s
Example:
#####
hello
#####
world
#####
in this case, "hello" should be in one file and "world" should be in another file
I am using python

Answer 1

If I understand your requirements correctly, you want to be able to take input from a file with a delimiter of #####
#####
hello
#####
world
#####
and this would generate a file for each block between
hello
and
world
You can use re.split to get the splits
splits = re.split("[#]{5}\n", input_buffer)
would give something like (note: above assumes the split also includes a newline)
['', 'hello\n', 'world\n', '']
and to get only the splits with actual text (assuming that trailing new lines are to be removed)
[i.strip() for i in splits if i]
Output filename was also not specified so used
for index, val in enumerate([i.strip() for i in splits if i]):
with open("output%d"%index, "w+") as f:
to create files named output0, outputN
import re
import StringIO
input_text = '''#####
hello
#####
world
#####
'''
string_file = StringIO.StringIO(input_text)
input_buffer = string_file.read()
splits = re.split("[#]{5}\n", input_buffer)
for index, val in enumerate([i.strip() for i in splits if i]):
with open("output%d"%index, "w+") as f:
f.write(val)
Just a helper, can obviously use a different regular expression to split on, change output name to something more suitable, etc.
Also if as the title of this question says using text between [- and -] splits could be obtained using re.findall instead
input_text = '''[-hello-]
[-world-]
'''
string_file = StringIO.StringIO(input_text)
input_buffer = string_file.read()
splits = re.findall("\[-(.*)-\]", input_buffer)
for index, val in enumerate(splits):
with open("output%d"%index, "w+") as f:
f.write(val)

Answer 2

This could do the trick:
with open('a.txt') as r: #open source file and assign it to variable r
r = r.read().split('#####') #read the contents and break it into list of elements separated by '#####'
new = [item.strip() for item in r if item] #clean empty rows from the list
for i, item in enumerate(new): #iterate trough new list and assign a number to each iteration starting with 0 (default)
with open('a%s.txt' % i+1, 'w') as w: #create new file for each element from the list that will be named 'a' + 'value of i + 1' + '.txt'
w.write(item) #writing contents of current element into file
This will read your file that I called 'a.txt' and produce files named a1.txt, a2.txt ... an.txt