How to split a string with parentheses and spaces into a list

I want to split strings like:

(so) what (are you trying to say)
 
what (do you mean)

Into lists like:

[(so), what, (are you trying to say)]

[what, (do you mean)]

The code that I tried is below. In the site regexr, the regex expression match the parts that I want but gives a warning, so… I’m not a expert in regex, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

import re
string = "(so) what (are you trying to say)?"

rx = re.compile(r"((\([\w \w]*\)|[\w]*))")

print(re.split(rx, string ))

>Solution :

Using [\w \w]* is the same as [\w ]* and also matches an empty string.

Instead of using split, you can use re.findall without any capture groups and write the pattern like:

\(\w+(?:[^\S\n]+\w+)*\)|\w+

• \( Match (
  • \w+ Match 1+ word chars
  • (?:[^\S\n]+\w+)* Optionally repeat matching spaces and 1+ word chars
• \) Match )
• | Or
• \w+ Match 1+ word chars

Regex demo

import re
string = "(so) what (are you trying to say)? what (do you mean)"

rx = re.compile(r"\(\w+(?:[^\S\n]+\w+)*\)|\w+")

print(re.findall(rx, string))

Output

['(so)', 'what', '(are you trying to say)', 'what', '(do you mean)']