split string on a number of different characters

Question

I'd like to split a string using one or more separator characters.

E.g. "a b.c", split on " " and "." would give the list ["a", "b", "c"].

At the moment, I can't see anything in the standard library to do this, and my own attempts are a bit clumsy. E.g.

def my_split(string, split_chars):
    if isinstance(string_L, basestring):
        string_L = [string_L]
    try:
        split_char = split_chars[0]
    except IndexError:
        return string_L

    res = []
    for s in string_L:
        res.extend(s.split(split_char))
    return my_split(res, split_chars[1:])

print my_split("a b.c", [' ', '.'])

Horrible! Any better suggestions?

Answer 1

>>> re.split('[ .]', 'a b.c')
['a', 'b', 'c']

Answer 2

This one replaces all of the separators with the first separator in the list, and then "splits" using that character.

def split(string, divs):
    for d in divs[1:]:
        string = string.replace(d, divs[0])
    return string.split(divs[0])

output:

>>> split("a b.c", " .")
['a', 'b', 'c']

>>> split("a b.c", ".")
['a b', 'c']

I do like that 're' solution though.

Answer 3

Not very fast but does the job:

def my_split(text, seps):
  for sep in seps:
    text = text.replace(sep, seps[0])
  return text.split(seps[0])