best way to create a dict from string

[Tim Arnold]

Hi,
I've got some text to parse that looks like this

text = ''' blah blah blah
\Template[Name=RAD,LMRB=False,LMRG=True]{tables}
ho dee ho
'''
I want to extract the bit between the brackets and create a dictionary.
Here's what I'm doing now:

def options(text):
d = dict()
options = text[text.find('[')+1:text.find(']')]
for k,v in [val.split('=') for val in options.split(',')]:
d[k] = v
return d

if __name__ == '__main__':
for line in text.split('\n'):
if line.startswith('\\Template'):
print options(line)


is that the best way or maybe there's something simpler? The options will
always be key=value format, comma separated.
thanks,
--TIm

 

[MRAB]

Hi,
I've got some text to parse that looks like this

text = ''' blah blah blah
\Template[Name=RAD,LMRB=False,LMRG=True]{tables}
ho dee ho
'''

If you're going to include backslashes in the string literal then use a
raw string for safety.

I want to extract the bit between the brackets and create a dictionary.
Here's what I'm doing now:

def options(text):
d = dict()
options = text[text.find('[')+1:text.find(']')]
for k,v in [val.split('=') for val in options.split(',')]:
d[k] = v
return d

1. I'd check whether there's actually a template.

2. 'dict' will accept a list of key/value pairs.

def options(text):
start = text.find('[')
end = text.find(']', start)
if start == -1 or end == -1:
return {}
options = text[start + 1 : end]
return dict(val.split('=') for val in options.split(','))