Applying a regular expression to a text file Python 3 - regex

Question

#returns same result i.e. only the first line as many times as 'draws'
infile = open("results_from_url.txt",'r')
file =infile.read() # essential to get correct formatting
for line in islice(file, 0, draws): # allows you to limit number of draws
for line in re.split(r"Wins",file)[1].split('\n'):
mains.append(line[23:38]) # slices first five numbers from line
stars.append(line[39:44]) # slices last two numbers from line
infile.close()
I am trying to use the above code to iterate through a list of numbers to extract the bits of interest. In this attempt to learn how to use regular expressions in Python 3, I am using lottery results opened from the internet. All this does is to read one line and return it as many times as I instruct in the value of 'draws'. Could someone tell me what I have done incorrectly, please. Does re 'terminate' somehow? The strange thing is if I copy the file into a string and run this routine, it works. I am at a loss - problem 'reading' a file or in my use of the regular expression?

Answer 1

I can't tell you why your code doesn't work, because I cannot reproduce the result you're getting. I'm also not sure what the purpose of
for line in islice(file, 0, draws):
is, because you never use the line variable after that, you immediately overwrite it with
for line in re.split(r"Wins",file)[1].split('\n'):
Plus, you could have used file.split('Wins') instead of re.split(r"Wins",file), so you aren't really using regex at all.
Regex is a tool to find data of a certain format. Why do you use it to split the input text, when you could use it to find the data you're looking for?
What is it you're looking for? A sequence of seven numbers, separated by commas. Translated into regex:
(?:\d+,){7}
However, we want to group the first 5 numbers - the "mains" - and the last 2 numbers - the "stars". So we'll add two named capture groups, named "mains" and "stars":
(?P<mains>(?:\d+,){5})(?P<stars>(?:\d+,){2})
This pattern will find all numbers you're looking for.
import re
data= open("infile.txt",'r').read()
mains= []
stars= []
pattern= r'(?P<mains>(?:\d+,){5})(?P<stars>(?:\d+,){2})'
iterator= re.finditer(pattern, data)
for count in range(int(input('Enter number of draws to examine: '))):
try:
match= next(iterator)
except StopIteration:
print('no more matches')
break
mains.append(match.group('mains'))
stars.append(match.group('stars'))
print(mains,stars)
This will print something like ['01,03,31,42,46,'] ['04,11,']. You may want to remove the commas and convert the numbers to ints, but in essence, this is how you would use regex.