How to perform regex using Python but with a slight twist?

Question

Let's say I have text file that contains (acquired from a page source):

    Manager:
Mark Smith
                 | 

    Managers:
Herb Dean, 
Jon Anik
                 |

    Manager:
Dominick Cruz
                 |

I open the file with:

with open('managers.txt', 'r') as file:
    data = file.read().replace('
', '')

Using regex (or another way if easier, but regex is mainly what I've been working with), how can I get the end result to be:

result = ["Mark Smith", "Herb Dean,Jon Anik", "Dominick Cruz"]

so that when it's "Managers", they are placed in the same string in the list, as shown in the example above.

I've tried the following without succeeding with what I want:

manager_list= re.findall(r'Manager:', data)

Thank you for any kind of help!

user_7326738 · Answer

You can use BeautifulSoup with itertools.groupby to group the name blocks on the span.ghost spacers:

import itertools as it
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as soup
html = '''    Manager:
Mark Smith
                 | 

    Managers:
Herb Dean, 
Jon Anik
                 |

    Manager:
Dominick Cruz
                 |
'''
vals = [i.text for i in soup(html, 'html.parser').select(':is(a, span.ghost)')]
r = [','.join(b) for a, b in it.groupby(vals, key=lambda x:x == '|') if not a]

Output:

['Mark Smith', 'Herb Dean,Jon Anik', 'Dominick Cruz']

How to perform regex using Python but with a slight twist?

1 Answers