A decade or two ago I wrote a sscanf module for just these reasons. It
used to be buried in the depths of python.org, but I haven't checked on
its whereabouts lately. I mostly use it for converting tabular stuff
produced by other programs - the standard approaches (re, split etc) can
be relatively gruesome for this sort of thing. The version currently at
large has a minor bug or two. If anyone wants an updated version, drop
me a line.

I wasn't aware of the Python-dev suggestion, but it invoked a strong
feeling of "I think I've been here before". When I first cooked this
thing up, I suggested to Guido that 'string' / 'format' ->  [list] was an
obvious move. He wasn't impressed with the notion, but I don't recall
why.

-Steve

Bruce Dawson wrote:
>  
>  I love programming in Python, but there are some things I have not found
>  the easy way to do. I understand that Python is supposed to be good at
>  text parsing, but I am having trouble with this simple task. Given this
>  text (the output from VisualC++) I want to find out how many errors and
>  warnings there were:
>  
>  smtpmail.exe - 0 error(s), 0 warning(s)
>  
>  In C/C++ that would be something like:
>  sscanf(buffer, "smtpmail.exe - %d error(s), %d warning(s)", &errors,
>  &warnings);
>  
>  It's not that I think the sscanf syntax is particularly elegant, but it
>  sure is compact! I saw the discussion about adding scanf to Python
>  
>  http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-April/014027.html
>  
>  but I need to know what people do right now when faced with this task.
>  
>  Let me know. E-mail answer as well would be nice, since this newsgroup
>  is rather high-traffic.
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