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Regular expression match / split

I am having some trouble trying to figure out how to use regular expressions in python. Ultimately I am trying to do what sscanf does for me in C.
I am trying to match given strings that look like so:
12345_arbitrarystring_2020_05_20_10_10_10.dat
I (seem) to be able to validate this format by calling match on the following regular expression
regex = re.compile('[0-9]{5}_.+_[0-9]{4}([-_])[0-9]{2}([-_])[0-9]{2}([-_])[0-9]{2}([:_])[0-9]{2}([:_])[0-9]{2}\\.dat')
(Note that I do allow for a few other separators then just '_')
I would like to split the given string on these separators so I do:
regex = re.compile('[_\\-:.]+')
parts = regex.split(given_string)
This is all fine .. the problem is that I would like my 'arbitrarystring' part to include '-' and '_' and the last split currently, well, splits them.
Other than manually cutting the timestamp and the first 5 digits off that given string, what can I do to get that arbitrarystring part?

You could use a capturing group to get the arbitrarystring part and omit the other capturing groups.
You could for example use a character class to match 1+ word characters or a hyphen using [\w-]+
If you still want to use split, you could add capturing groups for the first and the second part, and split only those groups.
^[0-9]{5}_([\w-]+)_[0-9]{4}[-_][0-9]{2}[-_][0-9]{2}[-_][0-9]{2}[:_][0-9]{2}[:_][0-9]{2}\.dat$
^^^^^^^^
Regex demo

It seems to be possible to cut down your regex to validate the whole pattern to:
^\d{5}_(.+?)_\d{4}[-_](?:\d{2}[-_]){2}(?:\d{2}[:_]){2}\d{2}\.dat$
Refer to group 1 for your arbitrary string.
Online demo
Quick reminder: You didn't seem to have used raw strings, but instead escaping with a double backslash. Python has raw strings which makes you don't have to escape backslashes nomore.

Python regex conditional, don't match if

Sorry for the somewhat unhelpful title, I'm having a really hard time explaining this issue.
I have a list of unique identifiers that can appear in a number of different ways and I'm trying to use regex to normalize them so I can compare across several databases. Here are some examples of them:
AB1201
AB-1201
AB1201-T
AB-12-01L1
AB1201-TER
AB1201 Transit
I've written a line of code that pulls out all hypens and spaces, and the used this regex:
([a-zA-Z]{2}[\d]{4})(L\d|Transit|T$)?
This works exactly as expected, returning a list looking like this:
AB1201
AB1201
AB1201T
AB1201L1
AB1201
AB1201T
The issue is, I have one identifier that looks like this: AB1201-02. I need this to be raised as an exception, and not included as a match.
Any ideas? I'm happy to provide more clarification if necessary. Thanks!
From Regex101 online tester

You can exclude matching the following hyphen and a digit (?!-\d) using a negative lookahead.
If it should start at the beginning of the string, you could use an anchor ^
Note that you could write [\d] as \d
^([a-zA-Z]{2}\d{4})(?!-\d)(L\d|Transit|T$)?
The pattern will look like
^ Start of string
( Capture group 1
[a-zA-Z]{2}\d{4} Match 2 times a-zA-Z and 4 digits
) Close group
(?!-\d) Negative lookahead, assert what is directly to the right is not - and a digit
(L\d|Transit|T$)? Optional capture group 2
Regex demo

Try this regular expression
^([a-zA-Z]{2}[\d]{4})(?!-\d)(L\d|Transit|T|-[A-Z]{3})?$
I have added the (?!...) Negative Lookahead to avoid matching with the -02.
(?!...) Negative Lookahead: Starting at the current position in the expression, ensures that the given pattern will not match. Does not consume characters.
You can view a demo on this link.

Why positive lookahead is working but negative lookahead doesn't?

First of all, regex needs to be working for both the python and PCRE(PHP). I'm trying to ignore if a regex pattern is followed by the letter 'x' to distinguish dimensions from strings like "number/number" in the given example below:
dummy word 222/2334; Ø14 x Ø6,33/523,23 x 2311 mm
From here, I'm trying to extract 222/2334 but not the 6,33/523,23 since that part is actually part of dimensions. So far I came up with this regex
((\d*(?:,?\.?)\d*(?:,?\.?))\s?\/\s?(\d*(?:,?\.?)\d*(?:,?\.?)))(?=\s?x)
which can extract what I don't want it to extract and it looks like this. If I change the positive lookahead to negative it captures both of them except the last '3' from 6,33/523,23. It looks like this. How can I only capture 222/2334? What am I doing wrong here?
Desired output:
222/2334
What I got
222/2334 6,33/523,2

You may use this simplified regex with negative lookahead:
((\d*(?:,?\.?)\d*(?:,?\.?))\s?\/\s?(\d*(?:,?\.?)\d*(?:,?\.?)))\b(?![.,]?\d|\s?x)
Updated RegEx Demo
It is important to use a word boundary in the end to avoid matching partial numbers (the reason of your regex matching till a digit before)
Also include [.,]?\d in negative lookahead condition so that match doesn't end at position before last comma.
This shorter (and more efficient) regex may also work for OP:
(\d+(?:[,.]\d+)*)\s*\/\s*(\d+(?:[,.]\d+)*)\b(?![.,]?\d|\s?x)
RegEx Demo 2

There are two easy options.
The first option is ugly and long, but basically negates a positive match on the string that is followed by x, then matches the patterns without it.
(?!PATTERN(?=x))PATTERN
See regex in use here
(?!\d+(?:[,.]\d+)?\s?\/\s?\d+(?:[,.]\d+)?(?=\s?x))(\d+(?:[,.]\d+)?)\s?\/\s?(\d+(?:[,.]\d+)?)
The second option uses possessive quantifiers, but you'll have to use the regex module instead of re in python.
See regex in use here
(\d+(?:[,.]\d+)?+)\s?\/\s?(\d+(?:[,.]\d+)?+)(?!\s?x)
Additionally, I changed your subpattern to \d+(?:[,.]\d+)?. This will match one or more digits, then optionally match . or , followed by one or more digits.

Regex that does not contain a substring after some point

I want a regex that doesn't match a string if contains the word page, and match if it's not contain.
^https?.+/(event|news)/.+(?!page).+$ this is the regex I'm currently using, so I want it to not match with, e.g. https://www.foosite.com/news/foopath/page/10, but it does. Where did I made a mistake?
The double .+ expressions should imply that there should be some string around the page string, and (?!page) should imply there must not be a string like page between them. What's wrong with this expression? Thanks, and sorry for poor grammar.

Your problem is that .+(?!page).+ will match foopath/page/10 because the first .+ match can end at the 1 in 10, and the second can match from there until $. Instead, just assert there is no combination of characters plus the word page after (event|news)/:
^https?.+/(event|news)/(?!.*page)
Demo on regex101
If you want more than just a match/nomatch decision, you can capture the entire matching string with this regex:
^https?.+/(event|news)/(?!.*page).*$
Demo on regex101

You might be looking for
^https?.+/(event|news)/(?:(?!page).)+$
See a demo on regex101.com.

Matching is usually way easier in regex than excluding.
I would rather match your excluded words and invert the logic on the if-clause.
if(!re.match(...

Python regex: Matching a URL

I have some confusion regarding the pattern matching in the following expression. I tried to look up online but couldn't find an understandable solution:
imgurUrlPattern = re.compile(r'(http://i.imgur.com/(.*))(\?.*)?')
What exactly are the parentheses doing ? I understood up until the first asterisk , but I can't figure out what is happening after that.

Regular expressions can be represented as graphs to understand there operation. A parallel connection between nodes indicate that it is optional a serial connection indicates taht it is mandatory and a loop indicated repitition over the same node.
(http://i.imgur.com/(.*))(\?.*)?
Debuggex Demo
So this starts with an imgur URL http://i.imgur.com/(.*) (mandatorily) having any characters untill a '?'(optional) is encountered. Following any characters after the '?'. Notice '?' has been escaped of its regular behaviour. The pink highlights indicate the capture groups.

(http://i.imgur.com/(.*))(\?.*)?
The first capturing group (http://i.imgur.com/(.*)) means that the string should start with http://i.imgur.com/ followed by any number of characters (.*) (this is a poor regex, you shouldn't do it this way). (.*) is also the second capturing group.
The third capturing group (\?.*) means that this part of the string must start with ? and then contain any number of any characters, as above.
The last ? means that the last capturing group is optional.
EDIT:
These groups can then be used as:
p = re.compile(r'(http://i.imgur.com/(.*))(\?.*)?')
m = p.match('ab')
m.group(0);
m.group(2);
To improve the regex, you must limit the engine to what characters you need, like:
(http://i.imgur.com/([A-z0-9\-]+))(\?[[^/]+*)?
[A-z0-9\-]+ limit to alphanumeric characters
[^/] exclude /

The (.*) means any character repeated any amount of times, the (\?.*)? matches the query string of a url for example (a imgur search of "cat"):
http://imgur.com/search?q=cat
http://imgur.com/search is matched by the (http://i.imgur.com/(.*)) (the search is specifically matched by the (.*)) section of the regex. The ?q=cat is matched by the (\?.*)? of the regex. In the regex the ? in the end means optional, so it means there might or might not be a query string. There is no query string in the url http://www.imgur.com. The parenthesis are used for grouping. We want to group (http://i.imgur.com/(.*)) as one thing because it matches the url, and there is another group within this that matches the page you are request (this is (.*)). We want to group (\?.*)? because it matches the query string.
Here is a diagram to help you