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1

I am looking for a way to use Regex to replace a string like this:

The quick #[brown]brown#[clear] fox jumped over the lazy dog.

with

The quick <a style="color:#3B170B">brown<a style="color:#FFFFFF"> fox jumped over the lazy dog.

However the color code is picked out of a like as such

color_list = dict(
                 brown = "#3B170B",
                 .....
                 clear = "#FFFFFF",
                 )
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1  
What have you tried? –  Eric Dec 4 '12 at 15:22
    
@Eric At this point not much, I have tried using re.sub() however I cannot to my knowledge use re.group() to pull out the partiular name of the color I want. –  Blackninja543 Dec 4 '12 at 15:24
    
Do you have control over your input string? That would be a good situation in which to use string formatting if so. –  RocketDonkey Dec 4 '12 at 15:25
    
@RocketDonkey No I don't have control over the input string. –  Blackninja543 Dec 4 '12 at 15:26
1  
you miss </a> closing tag... –  Jakub M. Dec 4 '12 at 15:26

3 Answers 3

up vote 2 down vote accepted

re.sub is what you need. It takes either a replacement string or a function as its second argument. Here we provide a function because part of generating the replacement string needs is a dictionary lookup.

re.sub(r'#\[(.+?)\]', lambda m:'<a style="color:%s">' % colors[m.group(1)], s)
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I am finding the re.sub function does not seem to work even when I implement something such as re.sub(r'#\[brown\]', colors['brown'], s) which should return the string to The quick brown #3B170Bfox#[clear] jumped over the lazy dog. –  Blackninja543 Dec 4 '12 at 16:11
    
I renamed color_list to colors. Are you forgetting to update that name? –  Steven Rumbalski Dec 4 '12 at 17:02
    
No in fact I used a completely different name in my code and was thrown an error to fix it, after the fix there was no change in the string. –  Blackninja543 Dec 4 '12 at 17:17
    
@Blackninja543: Are you assigning the result of re.sub back to your string? –  Steven Rumbalski Dec 4 '12 at 17:53
    
No.... just fixed it thanks. –  Blackninja543 Dec 4 '12 at 18:20
up vote 0 down vote

Just one line of fine python should help:

reduce(lambda txt, i:txt.replace('#[%s]'%i[0],'<a style="color=%s;">'%i[1]),colors.items(),txt)
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1  
Looks like Haskell-derived perfectly unreadable one-liner : ) . Although I like the idea –  Jakub M. Dec 4 '12 at 15:29
up vote 0 down vote

A crude pseudo-python solution would look like this:

for key, value in color_list.items()
  key_matcher = dict_key_to_re_pattern( key )
  formatted_value = '<a style...{0}...>'.format( value )
  re.sub( key_matcher, formatted_value, your_input_string )


def dict_key_to_re_pattern( key ):
   return r'#[{0}]'.format( key )
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