How to Use Regex in Python to Add a Blank Space After a Period

Описание: Discover how to effectively use Python's regex to add a blank space after a period in a string. Step-by-step guide and code example included!
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/73961245/ asked by the user 'dbelroeckk' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/20167262/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/73961387/ provided by the user 'AnonymousFrog' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/14451967/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Use Regex in Python to Add a Blank Space After a Period

When working with strings, especially in data cleaning and formatting, you may come across the need to add a space after a period. This problem might seem straightforward, but depending on the context and your requirements, the solution can involve some more advanced techniques like regex (regular expressions). In this guide, we will deep dive into how to achieve this using Python.

The Problem

Let's take a look at a specific example. Suppose you have the following sentence:

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In this string, there is a missing space after the period located between the words "glabrous" and "fruit." This results in the text appearing improperly formatted, which can lead to confusion when reading.

Our goal is to convert sent1 into the following sentence with the correct spacing:

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The Solution Using Regex

To tackle this problem, we will utilize Python's re module, which provides support for regular expressions. Specifically, we will use the re.sub() function to search for the period followed by certain conditions and replace it with the period plus a space.

Step-by-Step Explanation

Import the re module:
You need to have the re module imported to use regex features in Python.

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Understanding the Regex Pattern:
The regex pattern we will use is:

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.: This matches a literal period.

(?!\s|\d|$): This part is a negative lookahead assertion. It ensures that the period is not followed by:

\s: Any whitespace character (like a space).

\d: Any digit (0-9).

$: The end of the string.

This means we are looking for dots that do not have a space, a number, or the end of the string directly following them.

Implementing the Replacement:
Now, we can utilize re.sub() to perform the substitution:

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This code will scan sent1, find the period according to our pattern, and replace it with a period followed by a space.

Final Output

When you run the above code, the output will be:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

With just a few lines of code and the power of regex, we have successfully added a blank space after the period in a string.

Conclusion

Using regex in Python can dramatically simplify text processing tasks such as adding spaces after punctuation. Whether you're cleaning datasets, formatting text, or automating reports, mastering regex can be a powerful tool in your programming toolkit.

Feel free to apply the provided solution to your strings, and observe how regex can help enhance your string manipulations!