Splitting on last delimiter in Python string?

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Use .rsplit() or .rpartition() instead:

s.rsplit(',', 1)
s.rpartition(',')

str.rsplit() lets you specify how many times to split, while str.rpartition() only splits once but always returns a fixed number of elements (prefix, delimiter & postfix) and is faster for the single split case.

Demo:

>>> s = "a,b,c,d"
>>> s.rsplit(',', 1)
['a,b,c', 'd']
>>> s.rsplit(',', 2)
['a,b', 'c', 'd']
>>> s.rpartition(',')
('a,b,c', ',', 'd')

Both methods start splitting from the right-hand-side of the string; by giving str.rsplit() a maximum as the second argument, you get to split just the right-hand-most occurrences.

If you only need the last element, but there is a chance that the delimiter is not present in the input string or is the very last character in the input, use the following expressions:

# last element, or the original if no `,` is present or is the last character
s.rsplit(',', 1)[-1] or s
s.rpartition(',')[-1] or s

If you need the delimiter gone even when it is the last character, I’d use:

def last(string, delimiter):
    """Return the last element from string, after the delimiter

    If string ends in the delimiter or the delimiter is absent,
    returns the original string without the delimiter.

    """
    prefix, delim, last = string.rpartition(delimiter)
    return last if (delim and last) else prefix

This uses the fact that string.rpartition() returns the delimiter as the second argument only if it was present, and an empty string otherwise.

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