I'd like to match three-character sequences of letters (only letters 'a', 'b', 'c' are allowed) separated by comma (last group is not ended with comma).
Examples:
abc,bca,cbb
ccc,abc,aab,baa
bcb
I have written following regular expression:
re.match('([abc][abc][abc],)+', "abc,defx,df")
However it doesn't work correctly, because for above example:
>>> print bool(re.match('([abc][abc][abc],)+', "abc,defx,df")) # defx in second group
True
>>> print bool(re.match('([abc][abc][abc],)+', "axc,defx,df")) # 'x' in first group
False
It seems only to check first group of three letters but it ignores the rest. How to write this regular expression correctly?
Try following regex:
^[abc]{3}(,[abc]{3})*$
^...$ from the start till the end of the string
[...] one of the given character
...{3} three time of the phrase before
(...)* 0 till n times of the characters in the brackets
What you're asking it to find with your regex is "at least one triple of letters a, b, c" - that's what "+" gives you. Whatever follows after that doesn't really matter to the regex. You might want to include "$", which means "end of the line", to be sure that the line must all consist of allowed triples. However in the current form your regex would also demand that the last triple ends in a comma, so you should explicitly code that it's not so.
Try this:
re.match('([abc][abc][abc],)*([abc][abc][abc])$'
This finds any number of allowed triples followed by a comma (maybe zero), then a triple without a comma, then the end of the line.
Edit: including the "^" (start of string) symbol is not necessary, because the match method already checks for a match only at the beginning of the string.
The obligatory "you don't need a regex" solution:
all(letter in 'abc,' for letter in data) and all(len(item) == 3 for item in data.split(','))
You need to iterate over sequence of found values.
data_string = "abc,bca,df"
imatch = re.finditer(r'(?P<value>[abc]{3})(,|$)', data_string)
for match in imatch:
print match.group('value')
So the regex to check if the string matches pattern will be
data_string = "abc,bca,df"
match = re.match(r'^([abc]{3}(,|$))+', data_string)
if match:
print "data string is correct"
Your result is not surprising since the regular expression
([abc][abc][abc],)+
tries to match a string containing three characters of [abc] followed by a comma one ore more times anywhere in the string. So the most important part is to make sure that there is nothing more in the string - as scessor suggests with adding ^ (start of string) and $ (end of string) to the regular expression.
An alternative without using regex (albeit a brute force way):
>>> def matcher(x):
total = ["".join(p) for p in itertools.product(('a','b','c'),repeat=3)]
for i in x.split(','):
if i not in total:
return False
return True
>>> matcher("abc,bca,aaa")
True
>>> matcher("abc,bca,xyz")
False
>>> matcher("abc,aaa,bb")
False
If your aim is to validate a string as being composed of triplet of letters a,b,and c:
for ss in ("abc,bbc,abb,baa,bbb",
"acc",
"abc,bbc,abb,bXa,bbb",
"abc,bbc,ab,baa,bbb"):
print ss,' ',bool(re.match('([abc]{3},?)+\Z',ss))
result
abc,bbc,abb,baa,bbb True
acc True
abc,bbc,abb,bXa,bbb False
abc,bbc,ab,baa,bbb False
\Z means: the end of the string. Its presence obliges the match to be until the very end of the string
By the way, I like the form of Sonya too, in a way it is clearer:
bool(re.match('([abc]{3},)*[abc]{3}\Z',ss))
To just repeat a sequence of patterns, you need to use a non-capturing group, a (?:...) like contruct, and apply a quantifier right after the closing parenthesis. The question mark and the colon after the opening parenthesis are the syntax that creates a non-capturing group (SO post).
For example:
(?:abc)+ matches strings like abc, abcabc, abcabcabc, etc.
(?:\d+\.){3} matches strings like 1.12.2., 000.00000.0., etc.
Here, you can use
^[abc]{3}(?:,[abc]{3})*$
^^
Note that using a capturing group is fraught with unwelcome effects in a lot of Python regex methods. See a classical issue described at re.findall behaves weird post, for example, where re.findall and all other regex methods using this function behind the scenes only return captured substrings if there is a capturing group in the pattern.
In Pandas, it is also important to use non-capturing groups when you just need to group a pattern sequence: Series.str.contains will complain that this pattern has match groups. To actually get the groups, use str.extract. and
the Series.str.extract, Series.str.extractall and Series.str.findall will behave as re.findall.
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!)
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']
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']
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']
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>
I have 2 strings and I would like to get a result that gives me everything before the first '\n\n'.
'1. melléklet a 37/2018. (XI. 13.) MNB rendelethez\n\nÁltalános kitöltési előírások\nI.\nA felügyeleti jelentésre vonatkozó általános szabályok\n\n1.
'12. melléklet a 40/2018. (XI. 14.) MNB rendelethez\n\nÁltalános kitöltési előírások\n\nKapcsolódó jogszabályok\naz Önkéntes Kölcsönös Biztosító Pénztárakról szóló 1993. évi XCVI. törvény (a továbbiakban: Öpt.);\na személyi jövedelemadóról szóló 1995. évi CXVII.
I have been trying to combine 2 regular expressions to solve my problem; however, I could be on a bad track either. Maybe a function could be easier, I do not know.
I am attaching one that says that I am finding the character 'z'
extended regex : [\z+$]
I guess finding the first number is: [^0-9.].+
My problem is how to combine these two expressions to get the string inbetween them?
Is there a more efficient way to do?
You may use
re.findall(r'^(\d.*?)(?:\n\n|$)', s, re.S)
Or with re.search, since it seems that only one match is expected:
m = re.search(r'^(\d.*?)(?:\n\n|$)', s, re.S)
if m:
print(m.group(1))
See the Python demo.
Pattern details
^ - start of a string
(\d.*?) - Capturing group 1: a digit and then any 0+ chars, as few as possible
(?:\n\n|$) - a non-capturing group matching either two newlines or end of string.
See the regex graph:
I'm at a loss because I don't know how to write regular expressions of python to extract particular strings such as A =BC= D =EF= -> 'BC', 'EF. I searched a lot but couldn't write this operation. please help.
Something like this
=..=
regex.101
result:
Match 1
Full match 2-6 =BC=
Match 2
Full match 9-13 =EF=
Here is a nice tutorial:
Regex tutorial — A quick cheatsheet by examples
You could use =([^=]+)= to extract character (except =) any (non-zero) number of times. You can extract the contents within the equal signs using groups.
If you want to match exactly two characters within equal signs, =([^=]{2})= should do.
First you'll need to use the Regex library
import re
Then you can use re.findall(pattern, string) to get a list of all the substrings that match your pattern.
It's not clear from your question what defines the 'particular strings' you are looking for. Assuming you are looking for everything between two equals signs, but not greedily (not including equals signs inside), you could use the regex "=(.*?)=".
import re
m = re.findall("=(.*?)=", "A =BC= D =EF=")
Result:
>>>m
['BC', 'EF']
I'm trying to make a Regular Expression that captures the following:
- XX or XX:XX, up to 6 repetitions (XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX), where X is a hexadecimal number.
In other words, I'm trying to capture MAC addresses than can range from 1 to 6 bytes.
regex = re.compile("^([0-9a-fA-F]{2})(?:(?:\:([0-9a-fA-F]{2})){0,5})$")
The problem is that if I enter for example "11:22:33", it only captures the first match and the last, which results in ["11", "22"].
The question: is there any method that {0,5} character will let me catch all repetitions, and not the last one?
Thanks!
Not in Python, no. But you can first check the correct format with your regex, and then simply split the string at ::
result = s.split(':')
Also note that you should always write regular expressions as raw strings (otherwise you get problems with escaping). And your outer non-capturing group does nothing.
Technically there is a way to do it with regex only, but the regex is quite horrible:
r"^([0-9a-fA-F]{2})(?:([0-9a-fA-F]{2}))?(?:([0-9a-fA-F]{2}))?(?:([0-9a-fA-F]{2}))?(?:([0-9a-fA-F]{2}))?(?:([0-9a-fA-F]{2}))?$"
But here you would always get six captures, just that some might be empty.