Is there a way to use Houdini Group Syntax with Python?

[probiner 83]

I'm looking at way to filter lists of strings with a syntax similar to the Houdini's Group Syntax, where defining a range is as simple as
 

0-100

or stacking parameters as easy as

0-10 ^5

 

Now, regex provides this and more but its verbose and awful to look at in a parameter and to provide to people without the Regex manual, unlike something as simple as
 

0-200:4 (select each 4th from 0 to 200)

that has some resemblance with Python's string/list slicing syntax.

There's re, glob, fnmatch and hou.patternMatch, but none seem to provide this simple interface. Does anyone know of any similar way of going about matching strings?

Thanks
prb

Edited December 3, 2021 by probiner

[probiner 83]

I've hacked this but submitted an RFE so this may be offered natively, since for me it can make sense to think of work items as points with attributes which are beautifully filtered by Group Syntax.

Cheers
prb