Find all groups of 9 digits (\d{9}) up to a certain word - regex

Question

I have the following string extracted from a PDF file and I would like to obtain the nine digits "control class" number from it:
string = ‘(some text before)Process ID: JD7717PO CONTROL CLASS706345519,708393673, 706855190 CODE AAZ-1585 ZZF-8017. Sector: Name:MULTIBANK S.A. SAAT: 54177846900115Date of Production2019/12/20\x02.02.037SBPEAA201874249B\x0c(some text after)’
I want all the matches that occur before the word “Sector”, otherwise I will have undesired matches.
I’m using the “re” module, in Python 3.8.
I tried to use the negative lookbehind as follows:
(?<!Sector:)\d{9})
However, it didn’t work. I still had the matches like ‘54177846’ and ‘201874249’, which are after the ‘Sector’ word.
I also tried to “isolate” the search area between the words “Process ID” and “Sector”:
(Process ID:.*?)(\d{9})(.*Sector)
I also tried to search for the expression \d9 only up to the “Sector” word, but it returned no results.
I had to work a solution around, in two steps: (1) I created a regex that would find all the results up to the word “Sector” (desperate_regex = ‘(.*)Sector)’ and assigned it to a new variable,partial_text`; (2) I then searched for the desired regex ('\d{9}') within the new variable.
My code is working, but it does not satisfies me. How would I find my matches with a single regex search?
Please note that the first "control class" number is truncated with the text that comes before it ("CONTROL CLASS706345519").
(PS: I'm a totally newbie, and this is my first post. I hope I could explain my self. Thank you!)

Answer 1

The easiest way is to get the string before Sector and just search that:
split_string, _ = string.split("Sector")
nums = re.findall(r'\d{9}', split_string)
# ['706345519', '708393673', '706855190']
Another would be to use the third-party regex module, which allows overlapping matches:
import regex as re
nums = re.findall(r'(\d{9}).*?Sector', string, overlapped=True)
# ['706345519', '708393673', '706855190']

Answer 2

The regex described below may be more overkill then required for the actual case being handled, but better safe than sorry.
If you want match a string of exactly 9 digits, no more no fewer, then you should you negative lookbehind and lookahead assertions to ensure that the 9 digits are not preceded nor followed by another digit (again, in this case perhaps the OP knows that only 9-digit numbers will ever appear and this is overkill). You can also use a negative lookbehind assertion to ensure that Sector does not appear before the 9 digits. This later assertion is a variable length assertion requiring the regex package from PyPI:
r'(?<!Sector.*?)(?<!\d)\d{9}(?!\d)'
(?<!Sector.*? Assert that we haven't scanned past Sector. This handles the situation where Sector might appear multiple times in the input by ensuring that we never scan past the first occurrence.
(?<!\d) Assert that the previous character is not a digit.
\d{9} Match 9 digits.
(?!\d) Assert that the next character is not a digit.
The simplified version:
r'(?<!Sector.*?)\d{9}'
The code:
import regex as re
string = '(some text before)Process ID: JD7717PO CONTROL CLASS706345519,708393673, 706855190 CODE AAZ-1585 ZZF-8017. Sector: Name:MULTIBANK S.A. SAAT: 54177846900115Date of Production2019/12/20\x02.02.037SBPEAA201874249B\x0c(some text after)'
#print(re.findall(r'(?<!Sector.*?)\d{9}', string))
print(re.findall(r'(?<!Sector.*?)(?<!\d)\d{9}(?!\d)', string))
Prints:
['706345519', '708393673', '706855190']

Answer 3

You could use an alternation and break if you find "Sector":
import re
text = """(some text before)Process ID: JD7717PO CONTROL CLASS706345519,708393673, 706855190 CODE AAZ-1585 ZZF-8017. Sector: Name:MULTIBANK S.A. SAAT: 54177846900115Date of Production2019/12/20\x02.02.037SBPEAA201874249B\x0c(some text after)"""
rx = re.compile(r'\d{9}|(Sector)')
results = []
for match in rx.finditer(text):
if match.group(1):
break
results.append(match.group(0))
print(results)
Which yields
['706345519', '708393673', '706855190']

Answer 4

If either of these work I'll add an explaination to it:
[\s\S]+(?:Process ID:\s+)(.*)(?:\s+Sector)[\s\S]+
\g<1>
Or this?
(?i)[\s\S]+(?:control\s+class\s*)(\d{9})[\s\S]+
\g<1>