Remove everything after ... in python?

Question

Hi guys, Pretty new to Python so be nice please!

I have a string of text-how do I remove all the text after some certain characters? The text after will change so I want to remove after some text which doesn't change.

Hope that makes sense!

Thanks

Answer 1

Without a RE (which I assume is what you want):

def remafterellipsis(text):
  where_ellipsis = text.find('...')
  if where_ellipsis == -1:
    return text
  return text[:where_ellipsis + 3]

or, with a RE:

import re

def remwithre(text, there=re.compile(re.escape('...')+'.*')):
  return there.sub('', text)

Answer 2

Split on your separator at most once, and take the first piece:

sep = '...'
rest = text.split(sep, 1)[0]

You didn't say what should happen if the separator isn't present. Both this and Alex's solution will return the entire string in that case.

Answer 3

Assuming your separator is '...', but it can be any string.

text = 'some string... this part will be removed.'
head, sep, tail = text.partition('...')

>>> print head
some string

If the separator is not found, head will contain all of the original string.

The partition function was added in Python 2.5.

partition(...) S.partition(sep) -> (head, sep, tail)

Searches for the separator sep in S, and returns the part before it,
the separator itself, and the part after it.  If the separator is not
found, returns S and two empty strings.