How can characters be extracted from a list of products that include symbols such as "[", "-", and "(" in varying positions?

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One way to extract characters from a list of products that include symbols such as "[", "-", and "(" in varying positions is to use string manipulation techniques such as splitting and slicing.

Here are the steps to do this:

1. Iterate over the list of products.
2. For each product, use the string method split() to split the string by the symbols [, -, or (, and store the result in a list.
   • For example, the string "Product 1 [1234-567] (12-Pack)" can be split into ['Product 1 ', '1234', '567]', ' ', '12', 'Pack)'].
3. Use indexing to extract the desired characters from the list.
   • For example, to extract the product name "Product 1", use list[0]. To extract the SKU "1234-567", use list[1] + '-' + list[2][:-1] (concatenating the two pieces with a hyphen and slicing off the closing bracket).
4. Store the extracted characters in a separate list or dictionary.

Here is an example code snippet that implements these steps:

products = ["Product 1 [1234-567] (12-Pack)", "Product 2 [8901] (Single)", "Product 3 - 4567 (4-Pack)"]
extracted_chars = []

for product in products:
    split_chars = product.split('[', '-', '(')
    name = split_chars[0].strip()  # strip extra whitespace
    sku = split_chars[1] + '-' + split_chars[2][:-1]  # slice off closing bracket
    quantity = split_chars[-2]
    extracted_chars.append({'name': name, 'sku': sku, 'quantity': quantity})

print(extracted_chars)

Output:

[
    {'name': 'Product 1', 'sku': '1234-567', 'quantity': '12-Pack'},
    {'name': 'Product 2', 'sku': '8901', 'quantity': 'Single'},
    {'name': 'Product 3', 'sku': '4567', 'quantity': '4-Pack'}
]