Sorry if this post is a bit confusing to read this is my first post on this site and this is a hard question to ask, I have tried my best. I have also tried googling and i can not find anything.
I am trying to make my own command line like application in python and i would like to know how to split a string if a "\" is not in front of a space and to delete the backslash.
This is what i mean.
>>> c = "play song I\ Want\ To\ Break\ Free"
>>> print c.split(" ")
['play', 'song', 'I\\', 'Want\\', 'To\\', 'Break\\', 'Free']
When I split c with a space it keeps the backslash however it removes the space.
This is how I want it to be like:
>>> c = "play song I\ Want\ To\ Break\ Free"
>>> print c.split(" ")
['play', 'song', 'I ', 'Want ', 'To ', 'Break ', 'Free']
If someone can help me that would be great!
Also if it needs Regular expressions could you please explain it more because I have never used them before.
Edit: Now this has been solved i forgot to ask is there a way on how to detect if the backslash has been escaped or not too?
It looks like you're writing a commandline parser. If that's the case, may I recommend shlex.split? It properly splits a command string according to shell lexing rules, and handles escapes properly. Example:
>>> import shlex
>>> shlex.split('play song I\ Want\ To\ Break\ Free')
['play', 'song', 'I Want To Break Free']