working through regex expression to print specific word [duplicate] - python

Say I have a string
"3434.35353"
and another string
"3593"
How do I make a single regular expression that is able to match both without me having to set the pattern to something else if the other fails? I know \d+ would match the 3593, but it would not do anything for the 3434.35353, but (\d+\.\d+) would only match the one with the decimal and return no matches found for the 3593.
I expect m.group(1) to return:
"3434.35353"
or
"3593"

You can put a ? after a group of characters to make it optional.
You want a dot followed by any number of digits \.\d+, grouped together (\.\d+), optionally (\.\d+)?. Stick that in your pattern:
import re
print re.match("(\d+(\.\d+)?)", "3434.35353").group(1)
3434.35353
print re.match("(\d+(\.\d+)?)", "3434").group(1)
3434

This regex should work:
\d+(\.\d+)?
It matches one ore more digits (\d+) optionally followed by a dot and one or more digits ((\.\d+)?).

Use the "one or zero" quantifier, ?. Your regex becomes: (\d+(\.\d+)?).
See Chapter 8 of the TextWrangler manual for more details about the different quantifiers available, and how to use them.

use (?:<characters>|). replace <characters> with the string to make optional. I tested in python shell and got the following result:
>>> s = re.compile('python(?:3|)')
>>> s
re.compile('python(?:3|)')
>>> re.match(s, 'python')
<re.Match object; span=(0, 6), match='python'>
>>> re.match(s, 'python3')
<re.Match object; span=(0, 7), match='python3'>```

Read up on the Python RegEx library. The link answers your question and explains why.
However, to match a digit followed by more digits with an optional decimal, you can use
re.compile("(\d+(\.\d+)?)")
In this example, the ? after the .\d+ capture group specifies that this portion is optional.
Example

Related

Why doesn't \0 work in Python regexp substitutions, i.e. with sub() or expand(), while match.group(0) does, and also \1, \2, ...?

Why doesn't \0 work (i.e. to return the full match) in Python regexp substitutions, i.e. with sub() or match.expand(), while match.group(0) does, and also \1, \2, ... ?
This simple example (executed in Python 3.7) says it all:
import re
subject = '123'
regexp_pattern = r'\d(2)\d'
expand_template_full = r'\0'
expand_template_group = r'\1'
regexp_obj = re.compile(regexp_pattern)
match = regexp_obj.search(subject)
if match:
print('Full match, by method: {}'.format(match.group(0)))
print('Full match, by template: {}'.format(match.expand(expand_template_full)))
print('Capture group 1, by method: {}'.format(match.group(1)))
print('Capture group 1, by template: {}'.format(match.expand(expand_template_group)))
The output from this is:
Full match, by method: 123
Full match, by template:
Capture group 1, by method: 2
Capture group 1, by template: 2
Is there any other sequence I can use in the replacement/expansion template to get the full match? If not, for the love of god, why?
Is this a Python bug?
Huh, you're right, that is annoying!
Fortunately, Python's way ahead of you. The docs for sub say this:
In string-type repl arguments, in addition to the character escapes and backreferences described above, \g<name> will use the substring matched by the group named name, as defined by the (?P<name>...) syntax. \g<number> uses the corresponding group number.... The backreference \g<0> substitutes in the entire substring matched by the RE.
So your code example can be:
import re
subject = '123'
regexp_pattern = r'\d(2)\d'
expand_template_full = r'\g<0>'
regexp_obj = re.compile(regexp_pattern)
match = regexp_obj.search(subject)
if match:
print('Full match, by template: {}'.format(match.expand(expand_template_full)))
You also asked the far more interesting question of "why?". The rationale in the docs explains that you can use this to replace with more than 10 capture groups, because it's not clear whether \10 should be substituted with the 10th group, or with the first capture group followed by a zero, but doesn't explain why \0 doesn't work. I've not been able to find a PEP explaining the rationale, but here's my guess:
We want the repl argument to re.sub to use the same capture group backreferencing syntax as in regex matching. When regex matching, the concept of \0 "backreferencing" to the entire matched string is nonsensical; the hypothetical regex r'A\0' would match an infinitely long string of A characters and nothing else. So we cannot allow \0 to exist as a backreference. If you can't match with a backreference that looks like that, you shouldn't be able to replace with it either.
I can't say I agree with this logic, \g<> is already an arbitrary extension, but it's an argument that I can see someone making.
If you will look into docs, you will find next:
The backreference \g<0> substitutes in the entire substring matched by the RE.
A bit more deep in docs (back in 2003) you will find next tip:
There is a group 0, which is the entire matched pattern, but it can't be referenced with \0; instead, use \g<0>.
So, you need to follow this recommendations and use \g<0>:
expand_template_full = r'\g<0>'
Quoting from https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html
\number
Matches the contents of the group of the same number. Groups are numbered starting from 1. For example, (.+) \1 matches 'the the' or '55 55', but not 'thethe' (note the space after the group). This special sequence can only be used to match one of the first 99 groups. If the first digit of number is 0, or number is 3 octal digits long, it will not be interpreted as a group match, but as the character with octal value number. Inside the '[' and ']' of a character class, all numeric escapes are treated as characters.
To summarize:
Use \1, \2 up to \99 provided no more digits are present after the numbered backreference
Use \g<0>, \g<1>, etc (not limited to 99) to robustly backreference a group
as far as I know, \g<0> is useful in replacement section to refer to entire matched portion but wouldn't make sense in search section
if you use the 3rd party regex module, then (?0) is useful in search section as well, for example to create recursively matching patterns

Need a specific explanation of part of a regex code

I'm developing a calculator program in Python, and need to remove leading zeros from numbers so that calculations work as expected. For example, if the user enters "02+03" into the calculator, the result should return 5. In order to remove these leading zeroes in-front of digits, I asked a question on here and got the following answer.
self.answer = eval(re.sub(r"((?<=^)|(?<=[^\.\d]))0+(\d+)", r"\1\2", self.equation.get()))
I fully understand how the positive lookbehind to the beginning of the string and lookbehind to the non digit, non period character works. What I'm confused about is where in this regex code can I find the replacement for the matched patterns?
I found this online when researching regex expressions.
result = re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)
Where is the "repl" in the regex code above? If possible, could somebody please help to explain what the r"\1\2" is used for in this regex also?
Thanks for your help! :)
The "repl" part of the regex is this component:
r"\1\2"
In the "find" part of the regex, group capturing is taking place (ordinarily indicated by "()" characters around content, although this can be overridden by specific arguments).
In python regex, the syntax used to indicate a reference to a positional captured group (sometimes called a "backreference") is "\n" (where "n" is a digit refering to the position of the group in the "find" part of the regex).
So, this regex is returning a string in which the overall content is being replaced specifically by parts of the input string matched by numbered groups.
Note: I don't believe the "\1" part of the "repl" is actually required. I think:
r"\2"
...would work just as well.
Further reading: https://www.regular-expressions.info/brackets.html
Firstly, repl includes what you are about to replace.
To understand \1\2 you need to know what capture grouping is.
Check this video out for basics of Group capturing.
Here , since your regex splits every match it finds into groups which are 1,2... so on. This is so because of the parenthesis () you have placed in the regex.
$1 , $2 or \1,\2 can be used to refer to them.
In this case: The regex is replacing all numbers after the leading 0 (which is caught by group 2) with itself.
Note: \1 is not necessary. works fine without it.
See example:
>>> import re
>>> s='awd232frr2cr23'
>>> re.sub('\d',' ',s)
'awd frr cr '
>>>
Explanation:
As it is, '\d' is for integer so removes them and replaces with repl (in this case ' ').

matching number in python

I'm trying to match numbers with regex in python3.5
while re.match() works well, like this:
re.match(r"\d+(\.\d+)?", "12323.3 + 232131.2")
>>><_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='12323.3'>
re.findall() did not return what I expect(I want ["12323.3","232131.2"]):
re.findall(r"\d+(\.\d+)?", "12323.3 + 232131.2")
>>>['.3', '.2']
please someone tell me why. Thanks.
If there are capturing parentheses, findall returns all captured groups. You are only capturing the portion beginning with the ..
Try: r"(\d+(?:\.\d+)?)"
or capture nothing:
r"\d+(?:\.\d+)?"

How to match digits only after a particular string, stop matching if non-digit is found - Python 27

I have huge string like this dsdasdludocid=15878284988193842600#lrd=0x3be04dcc5b5ac513:0xdc5b0011ebb625a8,2
I want to get the number after ludocid, only consecutive numbers.
I have tried this regex (ludocid).*(?=\d+\d+) and many more but no luck.
You can try ludocid=(\d+):
s = "dsdasdludocid=15878284988193842600#lrd=0x3be04dcc5b5ac513:0xdc5b0011ebb625a8,2"
import re
re.findall(r"ludocid=(\d+)", s)
# ['15878284988193842600']
You can use this regex:
ludocid\D*(\d+)
RegEx Demo
This will match literal ludocid followed by 0 or more non-digits and then it will match 1 or more digits in captured group #1
Code:
>>> s = 'dsdasdludocid=15878284988193842600#lrd=0x3be04dcc5b5ac513:0xdc5b0011ebb625a8,2'
>>> print re.search(r'ludocid\D*(\d+)', s).group(1)
15878284988193842600
It looks like you just threw a bunch of regex bits together... Let's work through that.
First, this is the correct regex: ludocid.(\d+)
(You would want to use it with re.search instead of re.match, by the way. Match requires the regex to match the entire string.)
But let's look at yours and see what went wrong and how we can get to the correct regex.
(ludocid).*(?=\d+\d+)
Imagine a regex as a function. You pass it the right things, and it gives you the appropriate result. When you wrap things in parentheses, you're saying "Find this and give it back to me." You don't need the ludocid given back to you, I'm guessing... so remove those paren.
ludocid.*(?=\d+\d+)
Now you've got a .*. This is dangerous in regular expressions because it literally says "Grab as many of anything as you possibly can!" Often I use the non-greedy version (.*?), but in this case it looks like we're just expecting a single extra character there. If you know the literal character you can use that, but to be safe I'll leave it as ., which says "Grab any one character."
ludocid.(?=\d+\d+)
Now let's go inside the parentheses. You've got \d+\d+, which says "Find a sequence of one or more digits, and then find another sequence of one or more digits." This equates to "Find a sequence of two or more digits." I don't think this is what you wanted (it's not how you described the problem, anyway), so let's reduce that:
ludocid.(?=\d+)
Okay, great. Now... what is (?=...) for? It's called a lookahead assertion. It says "If you find this string, match things in front of it." The example given in the Python 2.7 documentation is:
(?=...)
Matches if ... matches next, but doesn’t consume any of the string. This is called a lookahead assertion. For example, Isaac (?=Asimov) will match 'Isaac ' only if it’s followed by 'Asimov'.
Essentially this means that your regex will never return the digits. Instead, it looks to see if digits exist, and then it returns things from the rest of the regex. Remove the lookahead assertion and we're there:
ludocid.(\d+)
When you use this with re.search, you'll get the group you want:
>>> s = "dsdasdludocid=15878284988193842600#lrd=0x3be04dcc5b5ac513:0xdc5b0011ebb625a8,2"
>>> import re
>>> re.search(r"ludocid.(\d+)", s).group(1)
'15878284988193842600'
To match only the digits that follow, stopping at the first non-numeric char, try a positive look behind:
(?<=ludocid=)(\d+)
So:
re.findall(r"(?<=ludocid=)(\d+)", s)
The positive look behind will look for what you want, and only match if it is preceded by the 'flag' string.
**Note: **You may need to escape that second = sign like this: (?<=ludocid\=)(\d+)

Invalid group reference in python 2.7+

I am trying to convert all WikiLink type of strings in my webpage(created in django) to html links.
I am using the following expression
import re
expr = r'\s+[A-Z][a-z]+[A-Z][a-z]+\s'
repl=r'\1'
mystr = 'this is a string to Test whether WikiLink will work ProPerly'
parser=re.compile(expr)
parser.sub(repl, mystr)
This returns me the following string with hex value replaced for the string.
"this is a string to Test whether<a href='/mywiki/\x01>\x01</a>'will work<a href='/mywiki/\x01>\x01</a>'"
Looking at the python help for re.sub, I tried changing \1 to \g<1> but that results in a invalid group reference error.
Please help me understand how to get this working
The problem here is that you don't have any captured groups in the expr.
Whatever part of the match you want to show up as \1, you need to put in parentheses. For example:
>>> expr = r'\s+([A-Z][a-z]+[A-Z][a-z]+)\s'
>>> parser=re.compile(expr)
>>> parser.sub(repl, mystr)
'this is a string to Test whetherWikiLinkwill work ProPerly'
The backreference \1 refers to the group 1 within the match, which is the part that matched the first parenthesized subexpression. Likewise, \2 is group 2, the part that matched the second parenthesized subexpression, and so on. If you use \1 when you have fewer than 1 group, some regexp engines will give you an error, others will use a literal '\1' character, a ctrl-A; Python does the latter, and the canonical representation of ctrl-A is '\x01', so that's why you see it that way.
Group 0 is the entire match. But that's not what you want in this case, because you don't want the spaces to be part of the substitution.
The only reason you need the g syntax is when a simple backreference is ambiguous. For example, if sub were 123\1456, there's no way to tell whether that means 123, followed by group 1, followed by 456, or 123 followed by group 1456, or…
Further reading on grouping and backreferences.

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