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Regular expression error: unbalanced parenthesis at position n

I have been meaning to extract the month name from the following string with regex and despite the fact that my regex works on a platform like regex101, I can't seem to be able to extract the word "August".
import re
s = "word\anyword\2021\August\202108_filename.csv"
re.findall("\d+\\([[:alpha:]]+)\\\d+", s)
Which results in the following error:
error: unbalanced parenthesis at position 17
I also tried using re.compile, re.escape as per suggestions of the previous posts dealing with the same error but none of them seems to work.
Any help and also a little explanation on why this isn't working is greatly appreciated.

You can use
import re
s = r"word\anyword\2021\August\202108_filename.csv"
m = re.search(r"\d+\\([a-zA-Z]+)\\\d+", s)
if m:
print(m.group(1))
See the Python demo.
There are three main problems here:
The input string should be the same as used at regex101.com, i.e. you need to make sure you are using literal backslashes in the Python code, hence the use of raw string literals for both the input text and regex
The POSIX character classes are not supported by Python re, so [[:alpha:]]+ should be replaced with some equivalent pattern, say, [A-Za-z]+ or [^\W\d_]+
Since it seems like you only expect a single match (there is only one August (month) name in the string), you do not need re.findall, you can use re.search. Only use re.findall when you need to extract multiple matches from a string.
Also, see these posts:
Python regex - r prefix
What does the "r" in pythons re.compile(r' pattern flags') mean?
What exactly do "u" and "r" string flags do, and what are raw string literals?

Python - REGEX issue with RE using function re.compile + search

I'm using regex library 're' in Python (2.7) to validate a flight number.
I've had no issues with expected outputs using a really helpful online editor here: http://regexr.com/
My results on regexr.com are: http://imgur.com/nB0QDug
My code is:
import re
test1 = 'ba116'
###Referencelink: http://academe.co.uk/2014/01/validating-flight-codes/
p = re.compile('/^([a-z][a-z]|[a-z][0-9]|[0-9][a-z])[a-z]?[0-9]{1,4}[a-z]?$/g')
m = p.search(test1) # p.match() to find from start of string only
if m:
print 'It works!: ', m.group() # group(1...n) for capture groups
else:
print 'Did not work'
I'm unsure why I get the 'didn't work' output where regexr shows one match (as expected)
I made a much simpler regex lookup, and it seemed that the results were correct, so it seems either my regex string is invalid, or I'm using re.complile (or perhaps the if loop) incorrectly?
'ba116' is valid, and should match.

Python's re.compile is treating your leading / and trailing /g as part of the regular expression, not as delimiters and modifiers. This produces a compiled RE that will never match anything, since you have ^ with stuff before it and $ with stuff after it.
The first argument to re.compile should be a string containing only the stuff you would put inside the slashes in a language that had /.../ regex notation. The g modifier corresponds to calling the findall method on the compiled RE; in this case it appears to be unnecessary. (Some of the other modifiers, e.g. i, s, m, correspond to values passed to the second argument to re.compile.)
So this is what your code should look like:
import re
test1 = 'ba116'
###Referencelink: http://academe.co.uk/2014/01/validating-flight-codes/
p = re.compile(r'^([a-z][a-z]|[a-z][0-9]|[0-9][a-z])[a-z]?[0-9]{1,4}[a-z]?$')
m = p.search(test1) # p.match() to find from start of string only
if m:
print 'It works!: ', m.group() # group(1...n) for capture groups
else:
print 'Did not work'
The r immediately before the open quote makes no difference for this regular expression, but if you needed to use backslashes in the RE it would save you from having to double all of them.

How to find a specific character in a string and put it at the end of the string

I have this string:
'Is?"they'
I want to find the question mark (?) in the string, and put it at the end of the string. The output should look like this:
'Is"they?'
I am using the following regular expression in python 2.7. I don't know why my regex is not working.
import re
regs = re.sub('(\w*)(\?)(\w*)', '\\1\\3\\2', 'Is?"they')
print regs
Is?"they # this is the output of my regex.

Your regex doesn't match because " is not in the \w character class. You would need to change it to something like:
regs = re.sub('(\w*)(\?)([^"\w]*)', '\\1\\3\\2', 'Is?"they')

As shown here, " is not captured by \w. Hence, it would probably be best to just use a .:
>>> import re
>>> re.sub("(.*)(\?)(.*)", r'\1\3\2', 'Is?"they')
'Is"they?'
>>>
. captures anything/everything in Regex (except newlines).
Also, you'll notice that I used a raw-string for the second argument of re.sub. Doing so is cleaner than having all those backslashes.

can't use variable inside regex

So, I have a long sequence of Unicode characters that I want to match using regular expressions:
char_set = '\u0041-\u005A|\u00C0-\u00D6|\u00D8-\u00DE|\u0100|\u0102|\u0104|\u0106|\u0108|\u010A|\u010C|\u010E|\u0110|\u0112|\u0114|\u0116|\u0118|\u011A|\u011C|\u011E|\u0120|\u0122|\u0124|\u0126|\u0128|\u012A|\u012C|\u012E|\u0130|\u0132|\u0134|\u0136|\u0139|\u013B|\u013D|\u013F|\u0141|\u0143|\u0145|\u0147|\u014A|\u014C|\u014E|\u0150|\u0152|\u0154|\u0156|\u0158|\u015A|\u015C|\u015E|\u0160|\u0162|\u0164|\u0166|\u0168|\u016A|\u016C|\u016E|\u0170|\u0172|\u0174|\u0176|\u0178|\u0179|\u017B|\u017D'
(These are all the uppercase characters comprehended in the Unicode range 0-382. Most of them are accented. PEP8 discourages the use of non-ASCII characters in Python scripts, so I'm using the Unicode codes instead of the string literals.)
If I simply compile that long string directly, it works. For instance, this matches all the words that begin with one of those characters:
regex = re.compile(u'\A[\u0041-\u005A|\u00C0-\u00D6|\u00D8-\u00DE|\u0100|\u0102|\u0104|\u0106|\u0108|\u010A|\u010C|\u010E|\u0110|\u0112|\u0114|\u0116|\u0118|\u011A|\u011C|\u011E|\u0120|\u0122|\u0124|\u0126|\u0128|\u012A|\u012C|\u012E|\u0130|\u0132|\u0134|\u0136|\u0139|\u013B|\u013D|\u013F|\u0141|\u0143|\u0145|\u0147|\u014A|\u014C|\u014E|\u0150|\u0152|\u0154|\u0156|\u0158|\u015A|\u015C|\u015E|\u0160|\u0162|\u0164|\u0166|\u0168|\u016A|\u016C|\u016E|\u0170|\u0172|\u0174|\u0176|\u0178|\u0179|\u017B|\u017D]')
But I want to re-use that same sequence of characters in several other regular expressions. I could simply copy and paste it every time, but that's ugly. So based on previous answers to similar questions I've tried this:
regex = re.compile(u'\A[%s]' % char_set)
No good. Somehow the above expression seems to match ANY character, not just the ones hardcoded under the variable 'char_set'.
I've also tried this:
regex = re.compile(u'\A[' + char_set + ']')
And this:
regex = re.compile(u'\A[' + re.escape(char_set) + ']')
And this too:
regex = re.compile(u'\A[{ }]'.format(char_set))
None of which works as expected.
Any thoughts? What am I doing wrong?
(I'm using Python 2.7 and Mac OS X 10.6)

When you're using a pattern with a set of characters in square brackets, you don't want to put any vertical bar (|) characters in the set. Instead, just string the characters together and it should work. Here's a session where I tried out your characters with no problems after stripping the | chars:
>>> import re
>>> char_set = u'\u0041-\u005A|\u00C0-\u00D6|\u00D8-\u00DE|\u0100|\u0102|\u0104|\u0106|\u0108|\u010A|\u010C|\u010E|\u0110|\u0112|\u0114|\u0116|\u0118|\u011A|\u011C|\u011E|\u0120|\u0122|\u0124|\u0126|\u0128|\u012A|\u012C|\u012E|\u0130|\u0132|\u0134|\u0136|\u0139|\u013B|\u013D|\u013F|\u0141|\u0143|\u0145|\u0147|\u014A|\u014C|\u014E|\u0150|\u0152|\u0154|\u0156|\u0158|\u015A|\u015C|\u015E|\u0160|\u0162|\u0164|\u0166|\u0168|\u016A|\u016C|\u016E|\u0170|\u0172|\u0174|\u0176|\u0178|\u0179|\u017B|\u017D'
>>> fixed_char_set = char_set.replace("|", "") # remove the unneeded vertical bars
>>> pattern = ur"\A[{}]".format(fixed_char_set) # create a pattern string
>>> regex = re.compile(pattern) # compile the pattern into a regex object
>>> print regex.match("%foo") # "%" is not in the character set, so match returns None
None
edit: Actually, it seems like there must be some other issue going on, since I don't match "%foo" even if I use your original char_set without stripping out anything. Please give examples of text that is matching when it shouldn't!

String Simple Substitution

What's the easiest way of me converting the simpler regex format that most users are used to into the correct re python regex string?
As an example, I need to convert this:
string = "*abc+de?"
to this:
string = ".*abc.+de.?"
Of course I could loop through the string and build up another string character by character, but that's surely an inefficient way of doing this?

Those don't look like regexps you're trying to translate, they look more like unix shell globs. Python has a module for doing this already. It doesn't know about the "+" syntax you used, but neither does my shell, and I think the syntax is nonstandard.
>>> import fnmatch
>>> fnmatch.fnmatch("fooabcdef", "*abcde?")
True
>>> help(fnmatch.fnmatch)
Help on function fnmatch in module fnmatch:
fnmatch(name, pat)
Test whether FILENAME matches PATTERN.
Patterns are Unix shell style:
* matches everything
? matches any single character
[seq] matches any character in seq
[!seq] matches any char not in seq
An initial period in FILENAME is not special.
Both FILENAME and PATTERN are first case-normalized
if the operating system requires it.
If you don't want this, use fnmatchcase(FILENAME, PATTERN).
>>>

.replacing() each of the wildcards is the quick way, but what if the wildcarded string contains other regex special characters? eg. someone searching for 'my.thing*' probably doesn't mean that '.' to match any character. And in the worst case things like match-group-creating parentheses are likely to break your final handling of the regex matches.
re.escape can be used to put literal characters into regexes. You'll have to split out the wildcard characters first though. The usual trick for that is to use re.split with a matching bracket, resulting in a list in the form [literal, wildcard, literal, wildcard, literal...].
Example code:
wildcards= re.compile('([?*+])')
escapewild= {'?': '.', '*': '.*', '+': '.+'}
def escapePart((parti, part)):
if parti%2==0: # even items are literals
return re.escape(part)
else: # odd items are wildcards
return escapewild[part]
def convertWildcardedToRegex(s):
parts= map(escapePart, enumerate(wildcards.split(s)))
return '^%s$' % (''.join(parts))

You'll probably only be doing this substitution occasionally, such as each time a user enters a new search string, so I wouldn't worry about how efficient the solution is.
You need to generate a list of the replacements you need to convert from the "user format" to a regex. For ease of maintenance I would store these in a dictionary, and like #Konrad Rudolph I would just use the replace method:
def wildcard_to_regex(wildcard):
replacements = {
'*': '.*',
'?': '.?',
'+': '.+',
}
regex = wildcard
for (wildcard_pattern, regex_pattern) in replacements.items():
regex = regex.replace(wildcard_pattern, regex_pattern)
return regex
Note that this only works for simple character replacements, although other complex code can at least be hidden in the wildcard_to_regex function if necessary.
(Also, I'm not sure that ? should translate to .? -- I think normal wildcards have ? as "exactly one character", so its replacement should be a simple . -- but I'm following your example.)

I'd use replace:
def wildcard_to_regex(str):
return str.replace("*", ".*").replace("?", .?").replace("#", "\d")
This probably isn't the most efficient way but it should be efficient enough for most purposes. Notice that some wildcard formats allow character classes which are more difficult to handle.

Here is a Perl example of doing this. It is simply using a table to replace each wildcard construct with the corresponding regular expression. I've done this myself previously, but in C. It shouldn't be too hard to port to Python.