I am trying to parse a set of files that have a simple syntax using RE. I'm interested in counting '$' expansions in the files, with one minor consideration. A line becomes a comment if the first non-white space character is a semicolon.
e.g. tests 1 and 2 should be ignored sInput = """ ; $1 test1 ; test2 $2 test3 ; $3 $3 $3 test4 $5 test5 $6 test7 $7 test7 """ Required output: ['$3', '$3', '$3', '$5', '$6', '$7'] The following RE works fine but does not deal with the commented lines: re.findall(r"(\$.)", sInput, re.I) e.g. ['$1', '$2', '$3', '$3', '$3', '$5', '$6', '$7'] My attempts at trying to use (?!;) type expressions keep failing. I'm not convinced this is suitable for a single expression, so I have also attempted to first find-replace any commented lines out without much luck. e.g. re.sub(r"^[\t ]*?;.*?$", r"", sInput, re.I+re.M) Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list