Extracting content between curly braces in Python

Question

I have lines of the form {},{},{},...,{}. The number of curly pairs is variable. I would like to have the content between the curlies in a list of strings.

Example:

Input: {a:b,c:d}

Output: ['a:b,c:d']

Input: {a:b,c:d},{e:f,g:h}

Output: ['a:b,c:d', 'e:f,g:h']

What is the best way to do that?

What more is there to explain? You write a regexp that matches something inside braces, and use `re.findall` to get a list of all the matches. — Barmar, Jun 26 '18 at 20:51
I can't explain any more without writing the code in full. But you're the programmer, not me. — Barmar, Jun 26 '18 at 20:52
Possible duplicate of [Regular expression to return text between parenthesis](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4894069/regular-expression-to-return-text-between-parenthesis) — user3483203, Jun 26 '18 at 21:04

nosklo · Answer 1 · 2018-06-26T20:51:42.623

1

re.findall(r'\{(.*?)\}', text)

example:

>>> text = '{a:b,c:d},{e:f,g:h}'
>>> re.findall(r'\{(.*?)\}', text)
['a:b,c:d', 'e:f,g:h']

edited Jun 26 '18 at 20:51

answered Jun 26 '18 at 20:50

nosklo

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This will include the braces in the results. You need to use lookarounds so they're matched but not returned. – Barmar Jun 26 '18 at 20:51

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 26 '18 at 21:32

0

i = '{a:b,c:d},{e:f,g:h}'
[e.strip('{}') for e in i.split('},{')]
# ['a:b,c:d', 'e:f,g:h']

answered Jun 26 '18 at 21:32

Sunitha

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And what happens if e.g. there is a space after some of the commas? – NickD Jun 26 '18 at 23:41

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 24 '22 at 12:35

If your requirement is to extracting content between "nth" set of braces in Python - its a simple extension of the above:

import re
qstring="""CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Time_Table]"""

contents_inside_barckets=re.findall(r'\[(.*?)\]', qstr)

Initial output:

['dbo', 'Time_Table']

Contents of the second (index =1) set of brackets:

contents_inside_barckets[1]

Output

'Time_Table'

Extracting content between curly braces in Python

3 Answers3