Find a string between two substrings, BUT the end of the first is the start of the next one

Question

So I have a string that goes like this:

...<p><noop><fademusic:23,0><26:1><wait:30> <speed:10><30:2><5D:1><color:3>August 3, 9:47 AM<b>District  Court<b>Defendant Lobby No. 2<color:0><p><hidetextbox:1><5D:0> <speed:255><music:8,0><wait:30><26:0><bgcolor:513,1,31><wait:7> <person:0,0,0><bg:2><bgcolor:258,1,31><wait:15><wait:30><hidetextbox:0> <name:512><shake:30,0><color:2>(Boy am I nervous!)<color:0><p> <hidetextbox:1><wait:45><name:1792><hidetextbox:0><bgcolor:769,8,31> Wright!<p>...

What do I need: find everything between <p>s. (Note that the ending one is also a starting one for the next.)

My code:

...
filetext = open(fn).read()
tag = '<p>'
result = re.findall(tag+"(.*?)"+tag,filetext,re.DOTALL)
print(result)
...

Expected output:

['<noop><fademusic:23,0><26:1><wait:30>\n<speed:10><30:2><5D:1><color:3>August 3, 9:47 AM<b>District \nCourt<b>Defendant Lobby No. 2<color:0>', '<hidetextbox:1><5D:0>\n<speed:255><music:8,0><wait:30><26:0><bgcolor:513,1,31><wait:7>\n<person:0,0,0><bg:2><bgcolor:258,1,31><wait:15><wait:30><hidetextbox:0>\n<name:512><shake:30,0><color:2>(Boy am I nervous!)<color:0>', '\n<hidetextbox:1><wait:45><name:1792><hidetextbox:0><bgcolor:769,8,31>\nWright!']

Resulting output:

['<noop><fademusic:23,0><26:1><wait:30>\n<speed:10><30:2><5D:1><color:3>August 3, 9:47 AM<b>District \nCourt<b>Defendant Lobby No. 2<color:0>', '\n<hidetextbox:1><wait:45><name:1792><hidetextbox:0><bgcolor:769,8,31>\nWright!']

Answer 1

No need for re module, just use str.split('<p>'). You may not want the empty strings in the result if <p> starts or ends a string so here is a solution if so:

s = '<p><noop><fademusic:23,0><26:1><wait:30> <speed:10><30:2><5D:1><color:3>August 3, 9:47 AM<b>District  Court<b>Defendant Lobby No. 2<color:0><p><hidetextbox:1><5D:0> <speed:255><music:8,0><wait:30><26:0><bgcolor:513,1,31><wait:7> <person:0,0,0><bg:2><bgcolor:258,1,31><wait:15><wait:30><hidetextbox:0> <name:512><shake:30,0><color:2>(Boy am I nervous!)<color:0><p> <hidetextbox:1><wait:45><name:1792><hidetextbox:0><bgcolor:769,8,31> Wright!<p>'
result = s.split('<p>')
for n in (0, -1):
    if result and not result[n]:
        del result[n]
print(result)

Output:

['<noop><fademusic:23,0><26:1><wait:30> <speed:10><30:2><5D:1><color:3>August 3, 9:47 AM<b>District  Court<b>Defendant Lobby No. 2<color:0>', '<hidetextbox:1><5D:0> <speed:255><music:8,0><wait:30><26:0><bgcolor:513,1,31><wait:7> <person:0,0,0><bg:2><bgcolor:258,1,31><wait:15><wait:30><hidetextbox:0> <name:512><shake:30,0><color:2>(Boy am I nervous!)<color:0>', ' <hidetextbox:1><wait:45><name:1792><hidetextbox:0><bgcolor:769,8,31> Wright!']

If you don't want any empty strings, e.g., 'abc<p><p>def' would return ['abc', '', 'def'], then use:

result = [n for n in s.split('<p>') if n]

Answer 2

I have made little changes to your code. I use a lookahead assertion (?= to match either the next <p> tag or the end of the string $. This ensures that the regex captures text until the next <p> tag if it exists or until the end of the string. Here is the updated code:

import re

filetext = open(fn).read()

tag = '<p>'
result = re.findall(tag + "(.*?)(?=" + tag + "|$)", filetext, re.DOTALL)

print(result)