String splitting with exceptions

From	John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Subject	String splitting with exceptions
Date	2013-08-28 16:44 +0000
Organization	Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Message-ID	<kvl9e5$19gk$1@leila.iecc.com> (permalink)

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I have a crufty old DNS provisioning system that I'm rewriting and I
hope improving in python.  (It's based on tinydns if you know what
that is.)

The record formats are, in the worst case, like this:

foo.[DOM]::[IP6::4361:6368:6574]:600::

What I would like to do is to split this string into a list like this:

[ 'foo.[DOM]','','[IP6::4361:6368:6574]','600','' ]

Colons are separators except when they're inside square brackets.  I
have been messing around with re.split() and re.findall() and haven't
been able to come up with either a working separator pattern for
split() or a working field pattern for findall().  I came pretty
close with findall() but can't get it to reliably match the
nothing between two adjacent colons not inside brackets.

Any suggestions? I realize I could do it in a loop where I pick stuff
off the front of the string, but yuck.

This is in python 2.7.5.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

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Thread

String splitting with exceptions John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> - 2013-08-28 16:44 +0000
  Re: String splitting with exceptions Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> - 2013-08-28 11:55 -0500
  Re: String splitting with exceptions random832@fastmail.us - 2013-08-28 13:14 -0400
    Re: String splitting with exceptions John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> - 2013-08-28 21:35 +0000
  Re: String splitting with exceptions Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2013-08-28 12:32 -0500
    Re: String splitting with exceptions Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> - 2013-08-28 18:18 +0000
  Re: String splitting with exceptions Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> - 2013-08-28 18:08 +0000
    Re: String splitting with exceptions Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2013-08-28 20:31 +0200
  Re: String splitting with exceptions wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2013-08-29 00:26 -0700

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