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up vote 2 down vote favorite

I've got a string that looks like this:

1080p [2.1GB] 720p [1.3GB] 480p [500MB]

In Python, I want to replace all the [x] with ,. I've tried this code:

import re
s1 = '1080p [2.1GB] 720p [1.3GB] 480p [500MB]'
s2 = re.sub("[(.*?)]", ", ", s1)

However, I get as this output: 1080p [2, 1GB] 720p [1, 3GB] 480p [500MB].

Instead, I would like to obtain something like 1080p, 720p, 480p.

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2 Answers 2

up vote 1 down vote accepted

You may use re.split.

>>> s1 = '1080p [2.1GB] 720p [1.3GB] 480p [500MB]'
>>> ', '.join(i for i in re.split(r'\s*\[[^\]]*\]\s*', s1) if i)
'1080p, 720p, 480p'
share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

You need to escape the brackets and use raw string:

s2 = re.sub(r"\[(.*?)\]", ", ", s1)

Note that outside of character class, these symbols - .^$*+?()[{\| - should be escaped to match literally.

Here is a demo

If you do not plan to use the contents inside [...], remove the round brackets.

s2 = re.sub(r"\[.*?\]", ", ", s1)

To obtain a "cleaner" string, you may use a bit more sophisticated regex and strip():

import re
s1 = '1080p [2.1GB] 720p [1.3GB] 480p [500MB]'
s2 = re.sub(r"\s*\[.*?\]", ",", s1)
print s2.strip(' ,')

Output of another demo: 1080p, 720p, 480p

share|improve this answer
    
but this adds a comma and space at the last. – Avinash Raj Jul 10 at 11:14
    
@AvinashRaj: I see, but i would like something like 1080p, 720p, 480p just means something similar, so it does answer the main issue why the regex was not working. – stribizhev Jul 10 at 11:16
    
I added an improved solution. – stribizhev Jul 10 at 11:24
    
What is [] present at the start.. you may shorten your regex as re.sub(r"\s*\[.*?\]", ", ", s1).rstrip(', ') – Avinash Raj Jul 10 at 11:32
    
I think I already have it, just did not fix in the demo. I also fixed a typo in the answer just now. I also assume there are always spaces between []s and other entities, otherwise, the replacement string should be as in the original. – stribizhev Jul 10 at 11:37

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