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How to get String Before Last occurrence of substring?

I want to get String before last occurrence of my given sub string.
My String was,
path =
D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v1001-1010.mov
my substring, 1001-1010 which will occurred twice. all i want is get string before its last occurrence.
Note: My substring is dynamic with different padding but only number.
I want,
D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v
I have done using regex and slicing,
>>> p = 'D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v1001-1010.mov'
>>> q = re.findall("\d*-\d*",p)
>>> q[-1].join(p.split(q[-1])[:-1])
'D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v'
>>>
Is their any better way to do by purely using regex?
Please Note I have tried so many eg:
regular expression to match everything until the last occurrence of /
Regex Last occurrence?
I got answer by using regex with slicing but i want to achieve by using regex alone..

Why use regex. Just use built in string methods:
path = "D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v1001-1010.mov"
index = path.rfind("1001-1010")
print(path[:index])

You can use a simple greedy match and a capture group:
(.*)1001-1010
Your match is in capture group #1
Since .* is greedy by nature, it will match longest match before matching your keyword 1001-1010.
RegEx Demo
As per comments below if keyword is not a static string then you may use this regex:
r'(.*\D)\d+-\d+'
Python Code:
>>> p = 'D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v1001-1010.mov'
>>> print (re.findall(r'(.*\D)\d+-\d+', p))
['D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v']

Thanks #anubhava,
My first regex was,
.*(\d*-\d*)\/
Now i have corrected mine..
.*(\d*-\d*)
or
(.*)(\d*-\d*)
which gives me,
>>> q = re.search('.+(\d*-\d*)', p)
>>> q.group()
'D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v0001-1001'
>>>
(.*\D)\d+-\d+
this gives me exactly what i want...
>>> q = re.search('(.*\D)\d+-\d+', p)
>>> q.groups()
('D:/me/vol101/Prod/cent/2019_04_23_01/image/AVEN_000_3400_img_pic_p1001-1010/pxy/AVEN_000_3400_img-mp4_to_MOV_v',)
>>>

Need help extracting data from a file

I'm a newbie at python.
So my file has lines that look like this:
-1 1:-0.294118 2:0.487437 3:0.180328 4:-0.292929 5:-1 6:0.00149028 7:-0.53117 8:-0.0333333
I need help coming up with the correct python code to extract every float preceded by a colon and followed by a space (ex: [-0.294118, 0.487437,etc...])
I've tried dataList = re.findall(':(.\*) ', str(line)) and dataList = re.split(':(.\*) ', str(line)) but these come up with the whole line. I've been researching this problem for a while now so any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

try this one:
:(-?\d\.\d+)\s
In your code that will be
p = re.compile(':(-?\d\.\d+)\s')
m = p.match(str(line))
dataList = m.groups()
This is more specific on what you want.
In your case .* will match everything it can
Test on Regexr.com:
In this case last element wasn't captured because it doesnt have space to follow, if this is a problem just remove the \s from the regex

This will do it:
import re
line = "-1 1:-0.294118 2:0.487437 3:0.180328 4:-0.292929 5:-1 6:0.00149028 7:-0.53117 8:-0.0333333"
for match in re.finditer(r"(-?\d\.\d+)", line, re.DOTALL | re.MULTILINE):
print match.group(1)
Or:
match = re.search(r"(-?\d\.\d+)", line, re.DOTALL | re.MULTILINE)
if match:
datalist = match.group(1)
else:
datalist = ""
Output:
-0.294118
0.487437
0.180328
-0.292929
0.00149028
-0.53117
-0.0333333
Live Python Example:
http://ideone.com/DpiOBq
Regex Demo:
https://regex101.com/r/nR4wK9/3
Regex Explanation
(-?\d\.\d+)
Match the regex below and capture its match into backreference number 1 «(-?\d\.\d+)»
Match the character “-” literally «-?»
Between zero and one times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy) «?»
Match a single character that is a “digit” (ASCII 0–9 only) «\d»
Match the character “.” literally «\.»
Match a single character that is a “digit” (ASCII 0–9 only) «\d+»
Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy) «+»

Given:
>>> s='-1 1:-0.294118 2:0.487437 3:0.180328 4:-0.292929 5:-1 6:0.00149028 7:-0.53117 8:-0.0333.333'
With your particular data example, you can just grab the parts that would be part of a float with a regex:
>>> re.findall(r':([\d.-]+)', s)
['-0.294118', '0.487437', '0.180328', '-0.292929', '-1', '0.00149028', '-0.53117', '-0.0333.333']
You can also split and partition, which would be substantially faster:
>>> [e.partition(':')[2] for e in s.split() if ':' in e]
['-0.294118', '0.487437', '0.180328', '-0.292929', '-1', '0.00149028', '-0.53117', '-0.0333.333']
Then you can convert those to a float using try/except and map and filter:
>>> def conv(s):
... try:
... return float(s)
... except ValueError:
... return None
...
>>> filter(None, map(conv, [e.partition(':')[2] for e in s.split() if ':' in e]))
[-0.294118, 0.487437, 0.180328, -0.292929, -1.0, 0.00149028, -0.53117, -0.0333333]

A simple oneliner using list comprehension -
str = "-1 1:-0.294118 2:0.487437 3:0.180328 4:-0.292929 5:-1 6:0.00149028 7:-0.53117 8:-0.0333333"
[float(s.split()[0]) for s in str.split(':')]
Note: this is simplest to understand (and pobably fastest) as we are not doing any regex evaluation. But this would only work for the particular case above. (eg. if you've to get the second number - in the above not so correctly formatted string would need more work than a single one-liner above).

Python regex to find only second quotes of paired quotes

I wondering if there is some way to find only second quotes from each pair in string, that has paired quotes.
So if I have string like '"aaaaa"' or just '""' I want to find only the last '"' from it. If I have '"aaaa""aaaaa"aaaa""' I want only the second, fourth and sixth '"'s. But if I have something like this '"aaaaaaaa' or like this 'aaa"aaa' I don't want to find anything, since there are no paired quotes. If i have '"aaa"aaa"' I want to find only second '"', since the third '"' has no pair.
I've tried to implement lookbehind, but it doesn't work with quantifiers, so my bad attempt was '(?<=\"a*)\"'.

You don't really need regex for this. You can do:
[i for i, c in enumerate(s) if c == '"'][1::2]
To get the index of every other '"'. Example usage:
>>> for s in ['"aaaaa"', '"aaaa""aaaaa"aaaa""', 'aaa"aaa', '"aaa"aaa"']:
print(s, [i for i, c in enumerate(s) if c == '"'][1::2])
"aaaaa" [6]
"aaaa""aaaaa"aaaa"" [5, 12, 18]
aaa"aaa []
"aaa"aaa" [4]

import re
reg = re.compile(r'(?:\").*?(\")')
then
for match in reg.findall('"this is", "my test"'):
print(match)
gives
"
"

If your necessity is to change the second quote you can also match the whole string and put the pattern before the second quote into a capture group. Then making the substitution by the first match group + the substitution string would archive the issue.
For example, this regex will match everything before the second quote and put it into a group
(\"[^"]*)\"
if you replace whole the match (which includes the second quote) by only the value of the capture group (which does not include the second quote), then you would just cut it off.
See the online example
import re
p = re.compile(ur'(\"[^"]*)\"')
test_str = u"\"test1\"test2\"test3\""
subst = r"\1"
result = re.sub(p, subst, test_str)
print result #result -> "test1test2"test3

Please read my answer about why you don't want to use regular expressions for such a problem, even though you can do that kind of non-regular job with it.
Ok then you probably want one of the solutions I give in the linked answer, where you'll want to use a recursive regex to match all the matching pairs.
Edit: the following has been written before the update to the question, which was asking only for second double quotes.
Though if you want to find only second double quotes in a string, you do not need regexps:
>>> s1='aoeu"aoeu'
>>> s2='aoeu"aoeu"aoeu'
>>> s3='aoeu"aoeu"aoeu"aoeu'
>>> def find_second_quote(s):
... pos_quote_1 = s2.find('"')
... if pos_quote_1 == -1:
... return -1
... pos_quote_2 = s[pos_quote_1+1:].find('"')
... if pos_quote_2 == -1:
... return -1
... return pos_quote_1+1+pos_quote_2
...
>>> find_second_quote(s1)
-1
>>> find_second_quote(s2)
4
>>> find_second_quote(s3)
4
>>>
here it either returns -1 if there's no second quote, or the position of the second quote if there is one.

a parser is probably better, but depending on what you want to get out of it, there are other ways. if you need the data between the quotes:
import re
re.findall(r'".*?"', '"aaaa""aaaaa"aaaa""')
['"aaaa"',
'"aaaaa"',
'""']
if you need the indices, you could do it as a generator or other equivalent like this:
def count_quotes(mystr):
count = 0
for i, x in enumerate(mystr):
if x == '"':
count += 1
if count % 2 == 0:
yield i
list(count_quotes('"aaaa""aaaaa"aaaa""'))
[5, 12, 18]

python regular expression : How can I filter only special characters?

I want to check either given words contain special character or not.
so below is my python code
The literal 'a#bcd' has '#', so it will be matchd and it's ok.
but 'a1bcd' has no special character. but it was filtered too!!
import re
regexp = re.compile('[~`!##$%^&*()-_=+\[\]{}\\|;:\'\",.<>/?]+')
if regexp.search('a#bcd') :
print 'matched!! nich catch!!'
if regexp.search('a1bcd') :
print 'something is wrong here!!!'
result :
python ../special_char.py
matched!! nich catch!!
something is wrong here!!!
I have no idea why it works like above..someone help me..T_T;;;
thanks~

Move the dash in you regular expression to the start of the [] group, like this:
regexp = re.compile('[-~`!##$%^&*()_=+\[\]{}\\|;:\'\",.<>/?]+')
Where you had the dash, it was read with the surrounding characters as )-_ and since it is inside [] it is interpreted as asking to match a range from ) to _. If you move the dash to just after the [ it has no special meaning and instead matches itself.
Here's an interactive session showing the specific problem there was in your regular expression:
>>> import re
>>> print re.search('[)-_]', 'abcd')
None
>>> print re.search('[)-_]', 'a1b')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x7f71082247e8>
>>> print re.search('[)-_]', 'a1b').group(0)
1
After fixing it:
>>> print re.search('[-)_]', 'a1b')
None
Unless there's some reason not visible in your question, I'd also say that the final + is not needed.

re will be relatively slow for this
I'd suggest trying
specialchars = '''-~`!##$%^&*()_=+[]{}\\|;:'",.<>/?'''
len(word) != len(word.translate(None, specialchars))
or
set(word) & set(specialchars)

python, list everything between two tags

I'm looking for the shortest neatest way to code the folloing.
say I have a string containing: 'the f<ox jumpe>d over the l<azy> dog <and the >fence'
Using < as the opening tag and > as the closing tag, I would like to save everything inbetween into a list.
if saved into list1, list1 would equal ['ox jumpe', 'azy', 'and the ']
Who knows of a nice, neat SHORT way to do this.
Thanks!

Regular expressions should do the trick here:
import re
text = 'the f<ox jumpe>d over the l<azy> dog <and the >fence'
list = re.findall('.*?\<(.*?)\>.*?', text)
print list
Edit:
You can read more about regex here
Mainly, what the regex from above does is:
.*? - non greedy match of all the characters until next wanted char
\< - matches the < char
(.*?) - non greedy match of all the characters until next wanted char, capture and returns them

Assuming every "<" and every ">" indicate the start or end of a tag e.g. you cant have <hi<there>:
x="<a><bb><ccc>"
>>> starts=(i for i,c in enumerate(x) if c=="<")
>>> ends=(i for i,c in enumerate(x) if c==">")
>>> ans=[x[i+1:j] for i,j in zip(starts,ends)]
>>> ans
['a', 'bb', 'ccc']
use izip if it is a large xml file to save memory (Although x[i+1:j] would need to be changed as you wouldn't want the whole file as a string).