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<title>5.21 shlex -- Simple lexical analysis
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<H1><A NAME=
"SECTION0072100000000000000000">
5.21 <tt class=
"module">shlex
</tt> --
Simple lexical analysis
</A>
<A NAME=
"module-shlex"></A>
<span class=
"versionnote">New in version
1.5.2.
</span>
The
<tt class=
"class">shlex
</tt> class makes it easy to write lexical analyzers for
simple syntaxes resembling that of the
<span class=
"Unix">Unix
</span> shell. This will often
be useful for writing minilanguages, (for example, in run control
files for Python applications) or for parsing quoted strings.
The
<tt class=
"module">shlex
</tt> module defines the following functions:
<dl><dt><table cellpadding=
"0" cellspacing=
"0"><tr valign=
"baseline">
<td><nobr><b><tt id='l2h-
1480' xml:id='l2h-
1480'
class=
"function">split
</tt></b>(
</nobr></td>
<td><var>s
</var><big>[
</big><var>, comments
</var><big>]
</big><var></var>)
</td></tr></table></dt>
Split the string
<var>s
</var> using shell-like syntax. If
<var>comments
</var> is
<tt class=
"constant">False
</tt> (the default), the parsing of comments in the given
string will be disabled (setting the
<tt class=
"member">commenters
</tt> member of the
<tt class=
"class">shlex
</tt> instance to the empty string). This function operates
<span class=
"versionnote">New in version
2.3.
</span>
The
<tt class=
"module">shlex
</tt> module defines the following class:
<dl><dt><table cellpadding=
"0" cellspacing=
"0"><tr valign=
"baseline">
<td><nobr><b><span class=
"typelabel">class
</span> <tt id='l2h-
1481' xml:id='l2h-
1481'
class=
"class">shlex
</tt></b>(
</nobr></td>
<td><var></var><big>[
</big><var>instream
</var><big>[
</big><var>,
infile
</var><big>[
</big><var>, posix
</var><big>]
</big><var></var><big>]
</big><var></var><big>]
</big><var></var>)
</td></tr></table></dt>
A
<tt class=
"class">shlex
</tt> instance or subclass instance is a lexical analyzer
object. The initialization argument, if present, specifies where to
read characters from. It must be a file-/stream-like object with
<tt class=
"method">read()
</tt> and
<tt class=
"method">readline()
</tt> methods, or a string (strings
are accepted since Python
2.3). If no argument is given, input will be
taken from
<code>sys.stdin
</code>. The second optional argument is a filename
string, which sets the initial value of the
<tt class=
"member">infile
</tt> member. If
the
<var>instream
</var> argument is omitted or equal to
<code>sys.stdin
</code>,
this second argument defaults to ``stdin''. The
<var>posix
</var> argument
was introduced in Python
2.3, and defines the operational mode. When
<var>posix
</var> is not true (default), the
<tt class=
"class">shlex
</tt> instance will
operate in compatibility mode. When operating in POSIX mode,
<tt class=
"class">shlex
</tt> will try to be as close as possible to the POSIX shell
parsing rules. See section
<A href=
"shlex-objects.html#shlex-objects">5.21.1</A>.
<p class=
"heading">See Also:
</p>
<dl compact=
"compact" class=
"seemodule">
<dt>Module
<b><tt class=
"module"><a href=
"module-ConfigParser.html">ConfigParser
</a></tt>:
</b>
<dd>Parser for configuration files similar to the
Windows
<span class=
"file">.ini
</span> files.
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<A NAME=
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</STRONG></a>
<LI><A href=
"shlex-objects.html">5.21.1 shlex Objects
</a>
<LI><A href=
"shlex-parsing-rules.html">5.21.2 Parsing Rules
</a>
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<span class=
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2.4.2, documentation updated on
28 September
2005.
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