Regex parsing of text file

Question

I have a large text file which contains information as follows:

0 / END OF ONE DATA, BEGIN SECOND DATA
361,315,0,'1 ',1,1,1,0,0,2,'NAT1    ',1,1115,1,0,0,0,0,0,0
0.0055501,0.12595,100
1,69,0,100,100,100,1,36,1.1,0.9,1.04283,1.001283,33,0,0,0,    /*[name1 ]*/
0.975,138
481,417,0,'1 ',1,1,1,0,0,2,'KAT1    ',1,115,1,0,0,0,0,0,0
0.00762817,0.14163,60
1,69,0,60,60,60,1,48,1.1,0.9,1.011735,0.917735,33,0,0,0,    /*[name2 ]*/
0 / END OF SECOND DATA, BEGIN THIRD DATA

I want to get the following in a dataframe:

name1
name2

I tried the following:

import os, pandas as pd
from io import StringIO
fn = r'C:\Users\asdert\Downloads\Network.RAW'
file = open(fn)
line = file.read()  # .replace("\n", "$$$$$")
file.close()
start = line.find('END OF ONE DATA, BEGIN SECOND DATA') + 1
end = line.find('END OF SECOND DATA, BEGIN THIRD DATA')
branchData = line[start:end]
df = pd.read_csv(StringIO(branchData), sep=r'\n')

I am not sure how to approach this. Basically I have to parse text between /* and */ and ignore lines which don't have /* and */

Answer 1

You can do away with regex if you have a single name per line:

import pandas as pd
names = []
filepath = "<PATH_TO_YOUR_FILE>"
with open(filepath, 'r') as f:            # open file for reading line by line
    for line in f:                        # read line by line
        start = line.find('/*[')          # get index of /*[ substring
        end = line.find(']*/', start+3)   # get index of ]*/ substring after found start+3 index
        if start >= 0 and end >= 0:       # if indices found OK
            names.append(line[start+3:end].strip()) # Put the value in between into names list

df = pd.DataFrame({'names': names})       # init the dataframe
>>> df
# =>   names
#   0  name1
#   1  name2

Also, see this Python demo.