So I have the following strings and I have been trying to figure out how to manipulate them in such a way that I get a specific format.
string1-itd_jan2021-internal
string2itd_mar2021-space
string3itd_feb2021-internal
string4-itd_mar2021-moon
string5itd_jun2021-internal
string6-itd_feb2021-apollo
I want to be able to get rid of any of the last string so I am just left with the month and year, like below:
string1-itd_jan2021
string2itd_mar2021
string3itd_feb2021
string4-itd_mar2021
string5itd_jun2021
string6-itd_feb2021
I thought about using string.split on the - but then realized that for some strings this wouldn't work. I also thought about getting rid of a set amount of characters by putting it into a list and slicing but the end is varying characters length?
Is there anything I can do it with regex or any other python module?
Use str.rsplit with the appropriate maxsplit parameter:
s = s.rsplit("-", 1)[0]
You could also use str.split (even though this is clearly the worse choice):
s = "-".join(s.split("-")[:-1])
Or using regular expressions:
s = re.sub(r'-[^-]*$', '', s)
# "-[^-]*" a "-" followed by any number of non-"-"
With a regex:
import re
re.sub(r'([0-9]{4}).*$', r'\1', s)
Use re.sub like so:
import re
lines = '''string1-itd_jan2021-internal
string2itd_mar2021-space
string3itd_feb2021-internal
string4-itd_mar2021-moon
string5itd_jun2021-internal
string6-itd_feb2021-apollo'''
for old in lines.split('\n'):
new = re.sub(r'[-][^-]+$', '', old)
print('\t'.join([old, new]))
Prints:
string1-itd_jan2021-internal string1-itd_jan2021
string2itd_mar2021-space string2itd_mar2021
string3itd_feb2021-internal string3itd_feb2021
string4-itd_mar2021-moon string4-itd_mar2021
string5itd_jun2021-internal string5itd_jun2021
string6-itd_feb2021-apollo string6-itd_feb2021
Explanation:
r'[-][^-]+$' : Literal dash (-), followed by any character other than a dash ([^-]) repeated 1 or more times, followed by the end of the string ($).
I'm trying to find all instances of a specific substring(a!b2 as an example) and return them with the 4 characters that follow after the substring match. These 4 following characters are always dynamic and can be any letter/digit/symbol.
I've tried searching, but it seems like the similar questions that are asked are requesting help with certain characters that can easily split a substring, but since the characters I'm looking for are dynamic, I'm not sure how to write the regex.
When using regex, you can use "." to dynamically match any character. Use {number} to specify how many characters to match, and use parentheses as in (.{number}) to specify that the match should be captured for later use.
>>> import re
>>> s = "a!b2foobar a!b2bazqux a!b2spam and eggs"
>>> print(re.findall("a!b2(.{4})", s))
['foob', 'bazq', 'spam']
import re
print (re.search(r'a!b2(.{4})')).group(1))
.{4} matches any 4 characters except special characters.
group(0) is the complete match of the searched string. You can read about group id here.
If you're only looking for how to grab the following 4 characters using Regex, what you are probably looking to use is the curly brace indicator for quantity to match: '{}'.
They go into more detail in the post here, but essentially you would do [a-Z][0-9]{X,Y} or (.{X,Y}), where X to Y is the number of characters you're looking for (in your case, you would only need {4}).
A more Pythonic way to solve this problem would be to make use of string slicing, and the index function however.
Eg. given an input_string, when you find the substring at index i using index, then you could use input_string[i+len(sub_str):i+len(sub_str)+4] to grab those special characters.
As an example,
input_string = 'abcdefg'
sub_str = 'abcd'
found_index = input_string.index(sub_str)
start_index = found_index + len(sub_str)
symbol = input_string[start_index: start_index + 4]
Outputs (to show it works with <4 as well): efg
Index also allows you to give start and end indexes for the search, so you could also use it in a loop if you wanted to find it for every sub string, with the start of the search index being the previous found index + 1.
My string looks like this:
bo_1
bo_1
bo_2
bo_2
bo_3
bo_3
bo_4
bo_4
bo_5
bo_5
bo_6
bo_6
bo_7
bo_7
bo_8
bo_8
bo_9
bo_9
bo_10
bo_10
I want to match the first instance of each digit and ignore the next duplicate line. My regex is as follows:
(bo_\d)(?![\s\S]*\1)
which returns the following:
'bo_2'
'bo_3'
'bo_4'
'bo_5'
'bo_6'
'bo_7'
'bo_8'
'bo_9'
'bo_1'
How would I modify the regex to return a result like this instead (to include 'bo_1' at the start and 'bo_10' at the end):
'bo_1'
'bo_2'
'bo_3'
'bo_4'
'bo_5'
'bo_6'
'bo_7'
'bo_8'
'bo_9'
'bo_10'
Technically you don't need regex for that (you can use set() for instance):
>>> # Assume your string is in the variable called "text"
>>> result = set(text.split('\n'))
>>> result
{'bo_7', 'bo_3', 'bo_1', 'bo_6', 'bo_5', 'bo_8', 'bo_9', 'bo_2', 'bo_4', 'bo_10'}
Anyway, the issue with your regex is that bo_1 is also matching bo_10, so it will be seen as a duplicate by the regex. You can solve it using word boundaries to ensure that the full 'word' is tested for a match:
\b(bo_\d+)\b(?![\s\S]*\b\1\b)
regex101 demo
Use
(bo_\d+$)(?![\s\S]*^\1$)
Since you want to include bo_10, you should use \d+ and not just \d in the initial group. Then, in your negative lookahead, put the backrefrence between start-of-line and end-of-line anchors, so that, for example, bo_1 does not get excluded because it's followed by a bo_10.
https://regex101.com/r/8khbcc/1
In python I have long string like (of which I removed all breaks)
stringA = 'abcdefkey:12/eas9ghijklkey:43/e3mnop'
What I want to do is to search this string for all occurrences of "key:", then extract the "values" following "key:".
One further complication for me is that I don't know how long these values belonging to key are (e.g. key:12/eas9 and key:43/e3). All I do know is that they do have to end with a digit whereas the rest of the string does not contain any digits.
This is why my idea was to slice from the indices of key plus the next say 10 characters (e.g. key:12/eas9g) and then work backward until isdigit() is false.
I tried to split my initial string (that did contain breaks):
stringA_split = re.split("\n", stringA)
for linex in stringA_split:
index_start = linex.rfind("key:")
index_end = index_start + 8
print(linex[index_start:index_end]
#then work backward
However, inserting line breaks does not help in any way as they are meaningless from a pdf-to-txt conversion.
How would I then solve this (e.g. as a start with getting all indices of '"key:"' and slice this to a list)?
import re
>>> re.findall('key:(\d+[^\d]+[\d])', stringA)
['12/eas9', '43/e3']
\d+ # One or more digits.
[^\d]+ # Everything except a digit (equivalent to [\D]).
[\d] # The final digit
(\d+[^\d]+[\d]) # The group of the expression above
'key:(\d+[^\d]+[\d])' # 'key:' followed by the group expression
If you want key: in your result:
>>> re.findall('(key:\d+[^\d]+[\d])', stringA)
['key:12/eas9', 'key:43/e3']
I'm not 100% sure I understand your definition of what defines a value, but I think this will get you what you described
import re
stringA = 'abcdefkey:12/eas9ghijklkey:43/e3mnop'
for v in stringA.split('key:'):
ma = re.match(r'(\d+\/.*\d+)', v)
if ma:
print ma.group(1)
This returns:
12/eas9
43/e3
You can apply just one RE that gets all the keys into an array of tuples:
import re
p=re.compile('key\:(\d+)\/([^\d]+\d)')
ret=p.findall(stringA)
After the execution, you have:
ret
[('12', 'eas9'), ('43', 'e3')]
edit: a better answer was posted above. I misread the original question when proposing to reverse here, which really wasn't necessary. Good luck!
If you know that the format is always key:, what if you reversed the string and rex for :yek? You'd isolate all keys and then can reverse them back
import re
# \w is alphanumeric, you may want to add some symbols
rex = re.compile("\w*:yek")
word = 'abcdefkey:12/eas9ghijklkey:43/e3mnop'
matches = re.findall(rex, word[::-1])
matches = [match[::-1] for match in matches]
To look through data, I am using regular expressions. One of my regular expressions is (they are dynamic and change based on what the computer needs to look for --- using them to search through data for a game AI):
O,2,([0-9],?){0,},X
After the 2, there can (and most likely will) be other numbers, each followed by a comma.
To my understanding, this will match:
O,2,(any amount of numbers - can be 0 in total, each followed by a comma),X
This is fine, and works (in RegExr) for:
O,4,1,8,6,7,9,5,3,X
X,6,3,7,5,9,4,1,8,2,T
O,2,9,6,7,11,8,X # matches this
O,4,6,9,3,1,7,5,O
X,6,9,3,5,1,7,4,8,O
X,3,2,7,1,9,4,6,X
X,9,2,6,8,5,3,1,X
My issue is that I need to match all the numbers after the original, provided number. So, I want to match (in the example) 9,6,7,11,8.
However, implementing this in Python:
import re
pattern = re.compile("O,2,([0-9],?){0,},X")
matches = pattern.findall(s) # s is the above string
matches is ['8'], the last number, but I need to match all of the numbers after the given (so '9,6,7,11,8').
Note: I need to use pattern.findall because thee will be more than one match (I shortened my list of strings, but there are actually around 20 thousand strings), and I need to find the shortest one (as this would be the shortest way for the AI to win).
Is there a way to match the entire string (or just the last numbers after those I provided)?
Thanks in advance!
Use this:
O,2,((?:[0-9],?){0,}),X
See it in action:http://regex101.com/r/cV9wS1
import re
s = '''O,4,1,8,6,7,9,5,3,X
X,6,3,7,5,9,4,1,8,2,T
O,2,9,6,7,11,8,X
O,4,6,9,3,1,7,5,O
X,6,9,3,5,1,7,4,8,O
X,3,2,7,1,9,4,6,X
X,9,2,6,8,5,3,1,X'''
pattern = re.compile("O,2,((?:[0-9],?){0,}),X")
matches = pattern.findall(s) # s is the above string
print matches
Outputs:
['9,6,7,11,8']
Explained:
By wrapping the entire value capture between 2, and ,X in (), you end up capturing that as well. I then used the (?: ) to ignore the inner captured set.
you don't have to use regex
split the string to array
check item 0 == 0 , item 1==2
check last item == X
check item[2:-2] each one of them is a number (is_digit)
that's all