Python Replacement of Shortcodes using Regular Expressions - regex

Question

I have a string that looks like this:
my_str = "This sentence has a [b|bolded] word, and [b|another] one too!"
And I need it to be converted into this:
new_str = "This sentence has a <b>bolded</b> word, and <b>another</b> one too!"
Is it possible to use Python's string.replace or re.sub method to do this intelligently?

Answer 1

Just capture all the characters before | inside [] into a group . And the part after | into another group. Just call the captured groups through back-referencing in the replacement part to get the desired output.
Regex:
\[([^\[\]|]*)\|([^\[\]]*)\]
Replacemnet string:
<\1>\2</\1>
DEMO
>>> import re
>>> s = "This sentence has a [b|bolded] word, and [b|another] one too!"
>>> m = re.sub(r'\[([^\[\]|]*)\|([^\[\]]*)\]', r'<\1>\2</\1>', s)
>>> m
'This sentence has a <b>bolded</b> word, and <b>another</b> one too!'
Explanation...

Answer 2

Try this expression: [[]b[|](\w+)[]] shorter version can also be \[b\|(\w+)\]
Where the expression is searching for anything that starts with [b| captures what is between it and the closing ] using \w+ which means [a-zA-Z0-9_] to include a wider range of characters you can also use .*? instead of \w+ which will turn out in \[b\|(.*?)\]
Online Demo
Sample Demo:
import re
p = re.compile(ur'[[]b[|](\w+)[]]')
test_str = u"This sentence has a [b|bolded] word, and [b|another] one too!"
subst = u"<bold>$1</bold>"
result = re.sub(p, subst, test_str)
Output:
This sentence has a <bold>bolded</bold> word, and <bold>another</bold> one too!

Answer 3

Just for reference, in case you don't want two problems:
Quick answer to your particular problem:
my_str = "This sentence has a [b|bolded] word, and [b|another] one too!"
print my_str.replace("[b|", "<b>").replace("]", "</b>")
# output:
# This sentence has a <b>bolded</b> word, and <b>another</b> one too!
This has the flaw that it will replace all ] to </b> regardless whether it is appropriate or not. So you might want to consider the following:
Generalize and wrap it in a function
def replace_stuff(s, char):
begin = s.find("[{}|".format(char))
while begin != -1:
end = s.find("]", begin)
s = s[:begin] + s[begin:end+1].replace("[{}|".format(char),
"<{}>".format(char)).replace("]", "</{}>".format(char)) + s[end+1:]
begin = s.find("[{}|".format(char))
return s
For example
s = "Don't forget to [b|initialize] [code|void toUpper(char const *s)]."
print replace_stuff(s, "code")
# output:
# "Don't forget to [b|initialize] <code>void toUpper(char const *s)</code>."