how to get a list with words that are next to a specific word in a string in python

Question

Assuming I have a string string = 'i am a person i believe i can fly i believe i can touch the sky'.

What I would like to do is to get all the words that are next to (from the right side) the word 'i', so in this case am, believe, can, believe, can.

How could I do that in python ? I found this but it only gives the first word, so in this case, 'am'

If the answer you have linked to does the thing you want once, but you need to do it more than once, what would you do? — r.ook, Oct 31 '18 at 14:48
The (currently) last answer to your linked question actually does give the neighbouring word for each occurrence of the target word. — 9769953, Oct 31 '18 at 14:48
@AddisonLynch That is *exactly* the link OP has sourced....? — r.ook, Oct 31 '18 at 14:49
how is the question duplicate ...? I also explained the difference and what the problem is with the answer — quant, Oct 31 '18 at 14:56

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 31 '18 at 14:54

Simple generator method:

def get_next_words(text, match, sep=' '):
    words = iter(text.split(sep))
    for word in words:
        if word == match:
            yield next(words)

Usage:

text = 'i am a person i believe i can fly i believe i can touch the sky'
words = get_next_words(text, 'i')

for w in words:
    print(w)

# am
# believe
# can
# believe
# can

Patrick Haugh · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-31T14:59:05.893

1

You can write a regular expression to find the words after the target word:

import re

word = "i"
string = 'i am a person i believe i can fly i believe i can touch the sky'

pat = re.compile(r'\b{}\b \b(\w+)\b'.format(word)) 
print(pat.findall(string))
# ['am', 'believe', 'can', 'believe', 'can']

edited Oct 31 '18 at 14:59

answered Oct 31 '18 at 14:50

Patrick Haugh

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1

This works. Is it possible though to replace the 'hardcoded' `i` with a `variable = 'i'` – quant Oct 31 '18 at 14:53
@quant Sure `re.findall(r'\b{}\b \b(\w+)\b'.format(word), string)` – Patrick Haugh Oct 31 '18 at 14:54
Thanks ! you could also edit the answer if you want, to the more generic one – quant Oct 31 '18 at 14:57

slider · Answer 3 · 2018-10-31T15:00:32.457

You can split the string and get the next index of the word "i" as you iterate with enumerate:

string = 'i am a person i believe i can fly i believe i can touch the sky'

sl = string.split()
all_is = [sl[i + 1] for i, word in enumerate(sl[:-1]) if word == 'i']
print(all_is)
# ['am', 'believe', 'can', 'believe', 'can']

Note that as @PatrickHaugh pointed out, we want to be careful if "i" is the last word so we can exclude iterating over the last word completely.

Eugene Yarmash · Answer 4 · 2018-10-31T14:58:39.933

1

One way is to use a regular expression with a look behind assertion:

>>> import re
>>> string = 'i am a person i believe i can fly i believe i can touch the sky'
>>> re.findall(r'(?<=\bi )\w+', string)
['am', 'believe', 'can', 'believe', 'can']

edited Oct 31 '18 at 14:58

answered Oct 31 '18 at 14:52

Eugene Yarmash

142,882
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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 31 '18 at 15:02

0

import re
string = 'i am a person i believe i can fly i believe i can touch the sky'
words = [w.split()[0] for w in re.split('i +', string) if w]
print(words)

answered Oct 31 '18 at 15:02

Hkoof

756
5
14

how to get a list with words that are next to a specific word in a string in python

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