Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!panix!roy
From: Roy Smith <roy@panix.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Subject: Re: How to decipher :re.split(r"(\(\([^)]+\)\))" in the example
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 23:33:27 -0400
Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <roy-AAB0F1.23332710072014@news.panix.com>
References: <981c1f5f-2c19-4efc-8397-796bde07f39b@googlegroups.com> <mailman.11746.1405042179.18130.python-list@python.org> <roy-CC0052.22182710072014@news.panix.com> <mailman.11747.1405046292.18130.python-list@python.org>
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost
X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1405049608 16719 127.0.0.1 (11 Jul 2014 03:33:28 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 03:33:28 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.5.3b3 (Intel Mac OS X)
Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:74340

In article <mailman.11747.1405046292.18130.python-list@python.org>,
 Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> wrote:

> On 2014-07-10 22:18, Roy Smith wrote:
> > > Outside this are \( and \): these are literal opening and closing
> > > bracket characters. So:
> > > 
> > >    \(\([^)]+\)\)
> >
> > although, even better would be to use to utterly awesome
> >> re.VERBOSE 
> > flag, and write it as:
> > 
> >      \({2} [^)]+ \){2}
> 
> Or heck, use a multi-line verbose expression and comment it for
> clarity:
> 
>   r = re.compile(r"""
>     (            # begin a capture group
>      \({2}       # two literal "(" characters
>      [^)]+       # one or more non-close-paren characters
>      \){2}       # two literal ")" characters
>     )            # close the capture group
>     """, re.VERBOSE)
> 
> -tkc

Ugh.  That reminds me of the classic commenting anti-pattern:

l = []                  # create an empty list
for i in range(10):     # iterate over the first 10 integers
    l.append(i)         # append each one to the list