I want to find if there is a pattern $*.* in text.
But i cannot figure out how to do that with regular expressions in python.
Escape the dollar and the dot:
re.search(r'\$\.', inputstring)
Rules of thumb:
Use a raw string literal, so you don't have to double slashes (both Python and regular expressions derive meaning from the backslash)
When in doubt, escape the character to make it match a literal character.
Since you are looking for a specific substring, you don't even need a regular expression for this. This should do:
"$." in my_string
Example:
>>> "$." in "tes$.t"
True
>>> "$." in "test"
False
Related
I need a regular expression able to match everything but a string starting with a specific pattern (specifically index.php and what follows, like index.php?id=2342343).
Regex: match everything but:
a string starting with a specific pattern (e.g. any - empty, too - string not starting with foo):
Lookahead-based solution for NFAs:
^(?!foo).*$
^(?!foo)
Negated character class based solution for regex engines not supporting lookarounds:
^(([^f].{2}|.[^o].|.{2}[^o]).*|.{0,2})$
^([^f].{2}|.[^o].|.{2}[^o])|^.{0,2}$
a string ending with a specific pattern (say, no world. at the end):
Lookbehind-based solution:
(?<!world\.)$
^.*(?<!world\.)$
Lookahead solution:
^(?!.*world\.$).*
^(?!.*world\.$)
POSIX workaround:
^(.*([^w].{5}|.[^o].{4}|.{2}[^r].{3}|.{3}[^l].{2}|.{4}[^d].|.{5}[^.])|.{0,5})$
([^w].{5}|.[^o].{4}|.{2}[^r].{3}|.{3}[^l].{2}|.{4}[^d].|.{5}[^.]$|^.{0,5})$
a string containing specific text (say, not match a string having foo):
Lookaround-based solution:
^(?!.*foo)
^(?!.*foo).*$
POSIX workaround:
Use the online regex generator at www.formauri.es/personal/pgimeno/misc/non-match-regex
a string containing specific character (say, avoid matching a string having a | symbol):
^[^|]*$
a string equal to some string (say, not equal to foo):
Lookaround-based:
^(?!foo$)
^(?!foo$).*$
POSIX:
^(.{0,2}|.{4,}|[^f]..|.[^o].|..[^o])$
a sequence of characters:
PCRE (match any text but cat): /cat(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|[^c]*(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)*/i or /cat(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|(?:(?!cat).)+/is
Other engines allowing lookarounds: (cat)|[^c]*(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)* (or (?s)(cat)|(?:(?!cat).)*, or (cat)|[^c]+(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)*|(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)+[^c]*) and then check with language means: if Group 1 matched, it is not what we need, else, grab the match value if not empty
a certain single character or a set of characters:
Use a negated character class: [^a-z]+ (any char other than a lowercase ASCII letter)
Matching any char(s) but |: [^|]+
Demo note: the newline \n is used inside negated character classes in demos to avoid match overflow to the neighboring line(s). They are not necessary when testing individual strings.
Anchor note: In many languages, use \A to define the unambiguous start of string, and \z (in Python, it is \Z, in JavaScript, $ is OK) to define the very end of the string.
Dot note: In many flavors (but not POSIX, TRE, TCL), . matches any char but a newline char. Make sure you use a corresponding DOTALL modifier (/s in PCRE/Boost/.NET/Python/Java and /m in Ruby) for the . to match any char including a newline.
Backslash note: In languages where you have to declare patterns with C strings allowing escape sequences (like \n for a newline), you need to double the backslashes escaping special characters so that the engine could treat them as literal characters (e.g. in Java, world\. will be declared as "world\\.", or use a character class: "world[.]"). Use raw string literals (Python r'\bworld\b'), C# verbatim string literals #"world\.", or slashy strings/regex literal notations like /world\./.
You could use a negative lookahead from the start, e.g., ^(?!foo).*$ shouldn't match anything starting with foo.
You can put a ^ in the beginning of a character set to match anything but those characters.
[^=]*
will match everything but =
Just match /^index\.php/, and then reject whatever matches it.
In Python:
>>> import re
>>> p='^(?!index\.php\?[0-9]+).*$'
>>> s1='index.php?12345'
>>> re.match(p,s1)
>>> s2='index.html?12345'
>>> re.match(p,s2)
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7d65fa8>
Came across this thread after a long search. I had this problem for multiple searches and replace of some occurrences. But the pattern I used was matching till the end. Example below
import re
text = "start![image]xxx(xx.png) yyy xx![image]xxx(xxx.png) end"
replaced_text = re.sub(r'!\[image\](.*)\(.*\.png\)', '*', text)
print(replaced_text)
gave
start* end
Basically, the regex was matching from the first ![image] to the last .png, swallowing the middle yyy
Used the method posted above https://stackoverflow.com/a/17761124/429476 by Firish to break the match between the occurrence. Here the space is not matched; as the words are separated by space.
replaced_text = re.sub(r'!\[image\]([^ ]*)\([^ ]*\.png\)', '*', text)
and got what I wanted
start* yyy xx* end
I need a regular expression able to match everything but a string starting with a specific pattern (specifically index.php and what follows, like index.php?id=2342343).
Regex: match everything but:
a string starting with a specific pattern (e.g. any - empty, too - string not starting with foo):
Lookahead-based solution for NFAs:
^(?!foo).*$
^(?!foo)
Negated character class based solution for regex engines not supporting lookarounds:
^(([^f].{2}|.[^o].|.{2}[^o]).*|.{0,2})$
^([^f].{2}|.[^o].|.{2}[^o])|^.{0,2}$
a string ending with a specific pattern (say, no world. at the end):
Lookbehind-based solution:
(?<!world\.)$
^.*(?<!world\.)$
Lookahead solution:
^(?!.*world\.$).*
^(?!.*world\.$)
POSIX workaround:
^(.*([^w].{5}|.[^o].{4}|.{2}[^r].{3}|.{3}[^l].{2}|.{4}[^d].|.{5}[^.])|.{0,5})$
([^w].{5}|.[^o].{4}|.{2}[^r].{3}|.{3}[^l].{2}|.{4}[^d].|.{5}[^.]$|^.{0,5})$
a string containing specific text (say, not match a string having foo):
Lookaround-based solution:
^(?!.*foo)
^(?!.*foo).*$
POSIX workaround:
Use the online regex generator at www.formauri.es/personal/pgimeno/misc/non-match-regex
a string containing specific character (say, avoid matching a string having a | symbol):
^[^|]*$
a string equal to some string (say, not equal to foo):
Lookaround-based:
^(?!foo$)
^(?!foo$).*$
POSIX:
^(.{0,2}|.{4,}|[^f]..|.[^o].|..[^o])$
a sequence of characters:
PCRE (match any text but cat): /cat(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|[^c]*(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)*/i or /cat(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|(?:(?!cat).)+/is
Other engines allowing lookarounds: (cat)|[^c]*(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)* (or (?s)(cat)|(?:(?!cat).)*, or (cat)|[^c]+(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)*|(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)+[^c]*) and then check with language means: if Group 1 matched, it is not what we need, else, grab the match value if not empty
a certain single character or a set of characters:
Use a negated character class: [^a-z]+ (any char other than a lowercase ASCII letter)
Matching any char(s) but |: [^|]+
Demo note: the newline \n is used inside negated character classes in demos to avoid match overflow to the neighboring line(s). They are not necessary when testing individual strings.
Anchor note: In many languages, use \A to define the unambiguous start of string, and \z (in Python, it is \Z, in JavaScript, $ is OK) to define the very end of the string.
Dot note: In many flavors (but not POSIX, TRE, TCL), . matches any char but a newline char. Make sure you use a corresponding DOTALL modifier (/s in PCRE/Boost/.NET/Python/Java and /m in Ruby) for the . to match any char including a newline.
Backslash note: In languages where you have to declare patterns with C strings allowing escape sequences (like \n for a newline), you need to double the backslashes escaping special characters so that the engine could treat them as literal characters (e.g. in Java, world\. will be declared as "world\\.", or use a character class: "world[.]"). Use raw string literals (Python r'\bworld\b'), C# verbatim string literals #"world\.", or slashy strings/regex literal notations like /world\./.
You could use a negative lookahead from the start, e.g., ^(?!foo).*$ shouldn't match anything starting with foo.
You can put a ^ in the beginning of a character set to match anything but those characters.
[^=]*
will match everything but =
Just match /^index\.php/, and then reject whatever matches it.
In Python:
>>> import re
>>> p='^(?!index\.php\?[0-9]+).*$'
>>> s1='index.php?12345'
>>> re.match(p,s1)
>>> s2='index.html?12345'
>>> re.match(p,s2)
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7d65fa8>
Came across this thread after a long search. I had this problem for multiple searches and replace of some occurrences. But the pattern I used was matching till the end. Example below
import re
text = "start![image]xxx(xx.png) yyy xx![image]xxx(xxx.png) end"
replaced_text = re.sub(r'!\[image\](.*)\(.*\.png\)', '*', text)
print(replaced_text)
gave
start* end
Basically, the regex was matching from the first ![image] to the last .png, swallowing the middle yyy
Used the method posted above https://stackoverflow.com/a/17761124/429476 by Firish to break the match between the occurrence. Here the space is not matched; as the words are separated by space.
replaced_text = re.sub(r'!\[image\]([^ ]*)\([^ ]*\.png\)', '*', text)
and got what I wanted
start* yyy xx* end
I use this statement result=re.match(r"\[.+\]",sentence) to match sentence="[balabala]". But I always get None. Why? I tried many times and online regex test shows it works.
Those double-quotes in your regular expression are delimiting the string rather than part of the regular expression. If you want them to be part of the actual expression, you'll need to add more, and escape them with a backslash (r"\"\[.+\]\""). Alternatively, enclose the string in single quotes instead (r'"\[.+\]"').
re.match() only produces a match if the expression is found at the beginning of the string. Since, in your example, there is a double quote character at the beginning of the string, and the regular expression doesn't include a double quote, it does not produce a match. Try re.search() or re.findall() instead.
Regx
["][\w\s]+["]
This will match any words enclosed within duble quotes, for example "asd"
s='hello dear "Akhil", how are you?'
print(re.findall(r'["][\w\s]+["]',s)
This will return "Akhil" in a list type.
I am reading through http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html. According to this the "r" in pythons re.compile(r' pattern flags') refers the raw string notation :
The solution is to use Python’s raw string notation for regular
expression patterns; backslashes are not handled in any special way in
a string literal prefixed with 'r'. So r"\n" is a two-character string
containing '\' and 'n', while "\n" is a one-character string
containing a newline. Usually patterns will be expressed in Python
code using this raw string notation.
Would it be fair to say then that:
re.compile(r pattern) means that "pattern" is a regex while, re.compile(pattern) means that "pattern" is an exact match?
As #PauloBu stated, the r string prefix is not specifically related to regex's, but to strings generally in Python.
Normal strings use the backslash character as an escape character for special characters (like newlines):
>>> print('this is \n a test')
this is
a test
The r prefix tells the interpreter not to do this:
>>> print(r'this is \n a test')
this is \n a test
>>>
This is important in regular expressions, as you need the backslash to make it to the re module intact - in particular, \b matches empty string specifically at the start and end of a word. re expects the string \b, however normal string interpretation '\b' is converted to the ASCII backspace character, so you need to either explicitly escape the backslash ('\\b'), or tell python it is a raw string (r'\b').
>>> import re
>>> re.findall('\b', 'test') # the backslash gets consumed by the python string interpreter
[]
>>> re.findall('\\b', 'test') # backslash is explicitly escaped and is passed through to re module
['', '']
>>> re.findall(r'\b', 'test') # often this syntax is easier
['', '']
No, as the documentation pasted in explains the r prefix to a string indicates that the string is a raw string.
Because of the collisions between Python escaping of characters and regex escaping, both of which use the back-slash \ character, raw strings provide a way to indicate to python that you want an unescaped string.
Examine the following:
>>> "\n"
'\n'
>>> r"\n"
'\\n'
>>> print "\n"
>>> print r"\n"
\n
Prefixing with an r merely indicates to the string that backslashes \ should be treated literally and not as escape characters for python.
This is helpful, when for example you are searching on a word boundry. The regex for this is \b, however to capture this in a Python string, I'd need to use "\\b" as the pattern. Instead, I can use the raw string: r"\b" to pattern match on.
This becomes especially handy when trying to find a literal backslash in regex. To match a backslash in regex I need to use the pattern \\, to escape this in python means I need to escape each slash and the pattern becomes "\\\\", or the much simpler r"\\".
As you can guess in longer and more complex regexes, the extra slashes can get confusing, so raw strings are generally considered the way to go.
No. Not everything in regex syntax needs to be preceded by \, so ., *, +, etc still have special meaning in a pattern
The r'' is often used as a convenience for regex that do need a lot of \ as it prevents the clutter of doubling up the \
I would like to know the reason I get the same result when using string prefix "r" or not when looking for a period (full stop) using python regex.
After reading a number sources (Links below) a multiple times and experimenting with in code to find the same result (again see below), I am still unsure of:
What is the difference when using string prefix "r" and not using string prefix "r", when looking for a period using regex?
Which way is considered the correct way of finding a period in a string using python regex with string prefix "r" or without string prefix "r"?
re.compile("\.").sub("!", "blah.")
'blah!'
re.compile(r"\.").sub("!", "blah.")
'blah!'
re.compile(r"\.").search("blah.").group()
'.'
re.compile("\.").search("blah.").group()
'.'
Sources I have looked at:
Python docs: string literals
http://docs.python.org/2/reference/lexical_analysis.html#string-literals
Regular expression to replace "escaped" characters with their originals
Python regex - r prefix
r prefix is for raw strings
http://forums.udacity.com/questions/7000217/r-prefix-is-for-raw-strings
The raw string notation is just that, a notation to specify a string value. The notation results in different string values when it comes to backslash escapes recognized by the normal string notation. Because regular expressions also attach meaning to the backslash character, raw string notation is quite handy as it avoids having to use excessive escaping.
Quoting from the Python Regular Expression HOWTO:
The solution is to use Python’s raw string notation for regular expressions; backslashes are not handled in any special way in a string literal prefixed with 'r', so r"\n" is a two-character string containing '\' and 'n', while "\n" is a one-character string containing a newline. Regular expressions will often be written in Python code using this raw string notation.
The \. combination has no special meaning in regular python strings, so there is no difference, at all between the result of '\.' and r'\.'; you can use either:
>>> len('\.')
2
>>> len(r'\.')
2
Raw strings only make a difference when the backslash + other characters do have special meaning in regular string notation:
>>> '\b'
'\x08'
>>> r'\b'
'\\b'
>>> len('\b')
1
>>> len(r'\b')
2
The \b combination has special meaning; in a regular string it is interpreted as the backspace character. But regular expressions see \b as a word boundary anchor, so you'd have to use \\b in your Python string every time you wanted to use this in a regular expression. Using r'\b' instead makes it much easier to read and write your expressions.
The regular expression functions are passed string values; the result of Python interpreting your string literal. The functions do not know if you used raw or normal string literal syntax.