I have a list of names
that have the title Dr.
in the wrong place.
Therefore i would like to
- loop over the list elements to replace either
Dr.,
orDr.
with - while also adding/moving
Dr.
to the start of the corresponding strings.
my result is rather disappointing. Is re.sub()
even the right approach?
names = ['Johnson, Dr., PWE', 'Peterson, FDR', 'Gaber, Dr. GTZ']
for idx, item in enumerate(names):
names[idx] = re.sub(r' Dr.(,)? ', ' Dr. ', item)
print(names)
['Johnson, Dr. PWE', 'Peterson, FDR', 'Gaber, Dr. GTZ']
desired_names = ['Dr. Johnson, PWE', 'Peterson, FDR', 'Dr. Gaber, GTZ']
CodePudding user response:
You can use 2 capture groups, and use those reverted in the replacement to get the right order.
([^,\n] ,\s*)(Dr\.),?\s*
([^,\n] ,\s*)
Capture any char except,
or a newline in group 1, then match a comma and optional whitespace char(Dr\.)
CaptureDr.
in group 2,?\s*
Match an optional comma and whitespace chars
Example
import re
names = ['Johnson, Dr., PWE', 'Peterson, FDR', 'Gaber, Dr. GTZ']
for idx, item in enumerate(names):
names[idx] = re.sub(r'([^,\n] ,\s*)(Dr\.),?\s*', r'\2 \1', item)
print(names)
Output
['Dr. Johnson, PWE', 'Peterson, FDR', 'Dr. Gaber, GTZ']