Develop Reference

The phone number field contains U.S. phone numbers, and needs to be modified to the international format, with "+1-" in front of the phone number

I am using
import re
def transform_record(record):
new_record = re.sub(r'(,[^a-zA-z])', r'\1+1-',record)
return new_record
print(transform_record("Sabrina Green,802-867-5309,System Administrator"))
#Excpected Output:::" Sabrina Green,+1-802-867-5309,System Administrator"
But I am getting output::
Sabrina Green,8+1-02-867-5309,S+-ystem Administrator

Below one is working.
re.sub(r",([\d-]+)",r",+1-\1" ,record)

import re
def transform_record(record):
new_record = re.sub(r',(?=\d)', r',+1-',record)
return new_record
print(transform_record("Sabrina Green,802-867-5309,System Administrator"))
# Sabrina Green,+1-802-867-5309,System Administrator
print(transform_record("Eli Jones,684-3481127,IT specialist"))
# Eli Jones,+1-684-3481127,IT specialist
print(transform_record("Melody Daniels,846-687-7436,Programmer"))
# Melody Daniels,+1-846-687-7436,Programmer
print(transform_record("Charlie Rivera,698-746-3357,Web Developer"))
# Charlie Rivera,+1-698-746-3357,Web Developer

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think
“I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.
def transform_record(record, number_field=1):
fields = record.split(",") # See note.
if not fields[number_field].startswith("+1-"):
fields[number_field] = "+1-" + fields[number_field]
return ",".join(fields)
I have a note in the above implementation. You are probably working with CSV data. You should use a proper CSV parser instead of just splitting on commas if so. Just splitting on commas goes wrong if a field contains escaped commas.

If your data is not well ordered, and you want to add +1- before any , that is followed with a digit, yo may use
re.sub(r',(?=\d)', r',+1-', record)
See the regex demo.
The ,(?=\d) pattern matches a comma first, and then (?=\d) positive lookahead makes sure there is a digit right after, without consuming the digit (and it remains in the replacement result).
See the Python demo online.

First of all, detect the pattern from the record text by r",(?=[0-9])". That means if there are some digits after , comma, then add +1- after the comma and then the previous phone number.
For example : 345-345-34567 convert to +1-345-345-34567
import re
def transform_record(record):
new_record = re.sub(r",(?=[0-9])",",+1-",record)
return new_record
print(transform_record("Sabrina Green,802-867-5309,System Administrator"))
# Sabrina Green,+1-802-867-5309,System Administrator
print(transform_record("Eli Jones,684-3481127,IT specialist"))
# Eli Jones,+1-684-3481127,IT specialist
print(transform_record("Melody Daniels,846-687-7436,Programmer"))
# Melody Daniels,+1-846-687-7436,Programmer
print(transform_record("Charlie Rivera,698-746-3357,Web Developer"))
# Charlie Rivera,+1-698-746-3357,Web Developer

import re
def transform_record(record):
new_record = re.sub(r"([\d-]+)",r"+1-\1",record)
return new_record

new_record = re.sub(r",([\d])",r",+1-",record)
This works for me.

In this code we want to search one or more digit so you need to use \d in a class with the "+" sign and for re.sub you need to add the previous phone number with "+1"
new_record = re.sub(r',([\d]+)',r',+1\1', record)

Regex to catch only the certain part of the string

Is there universal regex to catch only the names of companies?
Q4_2017_American_Airlines_Group_Inc
Q1_2016_Apple_Inc
Q4_2014_Alcoa_Inc
Q3_2015_Arconic_Inc
Q3_2017_Orkla_ASA
Q2_2018_AGCO_Corp
Quarter_3_2018_Autodesk_Inc
Q4_2018_Control4_Corp
The output should be:
American_Airlines_Group_Inc
Apple_Inc
Alcoa_Inc
Arconic_Inc
Orkla_ASA
AGCO_Corp
Autodesk_Inc
Note:
The name of the company may contain symbols or numbers

You can use this regex,
[a-zA-Z]+(?:_[a-zA-Z]+)*$
Your company names all start with alphabetical words and hyphen separated till end of string, for which above regex will work fine.
Here, [a-zA-Z]+ starts matching alphabetical company names, and (?:_[a-zA-Z]+)* further matches any alphabetical words having hyphen before them and $ ensures the matched string ends with the string.
Regex Demo
Python code,
import re
arr = ['Q4_2017_American_Airlines_Group_Inc','Q1_2016_Apple_Inc','Q4_2014_Alcoa_Inc','Q3_2015_Arconic_Inc','Q3_2017_Orkla_ASA','Q2_2018_AGCO_Corp','Quarter_3_2018_Autodesk_Inc']
for s in arr:
m = re.search(r'[a-zA-Z]+(?:_[a-zA-Z]+)*$', s)
print(s, '-->', m.group())
Prints,
Q4_2017_American_Airlines_Group_Inc --> American_Airlines_Group_Inc
Q1_2016_Apple_Inc --> Apple_Inc
Q4_2014_Alcoa_Inc --> Alcoa_Inc
Q3_2015_Arconic_Inc --> Arconic_Inc
Q3_2017_Orkla_ASA --> Orkla_ASA
Q2_2018_AGCO_Corp --> AGCO_Corp
Quarter_3_2018_Autodesk_Inc --> Autodesk_Inc
Also, if you have a single string of those company names, then you can use following code and use re.findall to list all company names,
import re
s = '''Q4_2017_American_Airlines_Group_Inc
Q1_2016_Apple_Inc
Q4_2014_Alcoa_Inc
Q3_2015_Arconic_Inc
Q3_2017_Orkla_ASA
Q2_2018_AGCO_Corp
Quarter_3_2018_Autodesk_Inc'''
print(re.findall(r'(?m)[a-zA-Z]+(?:_[a-zA-Z]+)*$', s))
Prints,
['American_Airlines_Group_Inc', 'Apple_Inc', 'Alcoa_Inc', 'Arconic_Inc', 'Orkla_ASA', 'AGCO_Corp', 'Autodesk_Inc']
Edit:
As Chyngyz Akmatov raised, if name can contain numbers and in general any symbol, then this regex will get the name properly, which assumes company name starts after year part and underscore.
(?<=\d{4}_).*$
Demo handling any character in company name

You can use re.sub:
import re
data = [re.sub('\w+\d{4}_', '', i) for i in filter(None, content.split('\n'))]
Output:
['American_Airlines_Group_Inc', 'Apple_Inc', 'Alcoa_Inc', 'Arconic_Inc', 'Orkla_ASA', 'AGCO_Corp', 'Autodesk_Inc']

You can also use this regex:
_\d+(?:_\d+)*_(.*)
Code:
import re
lst = ['Q4_2017_American_Airlines_Group_Inc', 'Q1_2016_Apple_Inc', 'Q4_2014_Alcoa_Inc', 'Q3_2015_Arconic_Inc', 'Q3_2017_Orkla_ASA', 'Q2_2018_AGCO_Corp', 'Quarter_3_2018_Autodesk_Inc']
for x in lst:
print(re.search(r'_\d+(?:_\d+)*_(.*)', x).group(1))
# American_Airlines_Group_Inc
# Apple_Inc
# Alcoa_Inc
# Arconic_Inc
# Orkla_ASA
# AGCO_Corp
# Autodesk_Inc

Assuming there are only normal letters and the names are the end of each line :
grep -o '[A-Za-z][A-Za-z_]*$' names

Trouble scooping out a certain portion of text out of a chunk

How can I get the address appeared before Telephone from the portion of text I've pasted below. I tried with the following but it gives me nothing.
This is the code I've tried so far with:
import re
content="""
Campbell, Bellam Associés Inc.
3003 Rue College
Sherbrooke, QC J1M 1T8
Telephone: 819-569-9255
Website: http://www.assurancescb.com
"""
pattern = re.compile(r"(.*)(?=Telephone)")
for item in pattern.finditer(content):
print(item.group())
Expected output:
Campbell, Bellam Associés Inc.
3003 Rue College
Sherbrooke, QC J1M 1T8
The block of texts are always like the pasted one and there is no flag attached to it using which I opt for positive lookbehind so I tried like above instead.

The dot does not match a line break character so you could use a modifier (?s) or use re.S or re.DOTALL
pattern = re.compile(r"(.*)(?=Telephone)", re.S)
or
pattern = re.compile(r"(?s)(.*)(?=Telephone)")
You could also get the match without using a group:
(?s).*(?=Telephone)

Change the line
pattern = re.compile(r"(.*)(?=Telephone)")
To
pattern = re.compile(r"(.*)(?=Telephone)", re.DOTALL)
So that your regex wildcard (*) would match newline characters.
:)

Using regular expressions in python to extract location mentions in a sentence

I am writing a code using python to extract the name of a road,street, highway, for example a sentence like "There is an accident along Uhuru Highway", I want my code to be able to extract the name of the highway mentioned, I have written the code below.
sentence="there is an accident along uhuru highway"
listw=[word for word in sentence.lower().split()]
for i in range(len(listw)):
if listw[i] == "highway":
print listw[i-1] + " "+ listw[i]
I can achieve this but my code is not optimized, i am thinking of using regular expressions, any help please

'uhuru highway' can be found as follows
import re
m = re.search(r'\S+ highway', sentence) # non-white-space followed by ' highway'
print(m.group())
# 'uhuru highway'

If the location you want to extract will always have highway after it, you can use:
>>> sentence = "there is an accident along uhuru highway"
>>> a = re.search(r'.* ([\w\s\d\-\_]+) highway', sentence)
>>> print(a.group(1))
>>> uhuru

You can do the following without using regexes:
sentence.split("highway")[0].strip().split(' ')[-1]
First split according to "highway". You'll get:
['there is an accident along uhuru', '']
And now you can easily extract the last word from the first part.

Python parsing

I'm trying to parse the title tag in an RSS 2.0 feed into three different variables for each entry in that feed. Using ElementTree I've already parsed the RSS so that I can print each title [minus the trailing )] with the code below:
feed = getfeed("http://www.tourfilter.com/dallas/rss/by_concert_date")
for item in feed:
print repr(item.title[0:-1])
I include that because, as you can see, the item.title is a repr() data type, which I don't know much about.
A particular repr(item.title[0:-1]) printed in the interactive window looks like this:
'randy travis (Billy Bobs 3/21'
'Michael Schenker Group (House of Blues Dallas 3/26'
The user selects a band and I hope to, after parsing each item.title into 3 variables (one each for band, venue, and date... or possibly an array or I don't know...) select only those related to the band selected. Then they are sent to Google for geocoding, but that's another story.
I've seen some examples of regex and I'm reading about them, but it seems very complicated. Is it? I thought maybe someone here would have some insight as to exactly how to do this in an intelligent way. Should I use the re module? Does it matter that the output is currently is repr()s? Is there a better way? I was thinking I'd use a loop like (and this is my pseudoPython, just kind of notes I'm writing):
list = bandRaw,venue,date,latLong
for item in feed:
parse item.title for bandRaw, venue, date
if bandRaw == str(band)
send venue name + ", Dallas, TX" to google for geocoding
return lat,long
list = list + return character + bandRaw + "," + venue + "," + date + "," + lat + "," + long
else
In the end, I need to have the chosen entries in a .csv (comma-delimited) file looking like this:
band,venue,date,lat,long
randy travis,Billy Bobs,3/21,1234.5678,1234.5678
Michael Schenker Group,House of Blues Dallas,3/26,4321.8765,4321.8765
I hope this isn't too much to ask. I'll be looking into it on my own, just thought I should post here to make sure it got answered.
So, the question is, how do I best parse each repr(item.title[0:-1]) in the feed into the 3 separate values that I can then concatenate into a .csv file?

Don't let regex scare you off... it's well worth learning.
Given the examples above, you might try putting the trailing parenthesis back in, and then using this pattern:
import re
pat = re.compile('([\w\s]+)\(([\w\s]+)(\d+/\d+)\)')
info = pat.match(s)
print info.groups()
('Michael Schenker Group ', 'House of Blues Dallas ', '3/26')
To get at each group individual, just call them on the info object:
print info.group(1) # or info.groups()[0]
print '"%s","%s","%s"' % (info.group(1), info.group(2), info.group(3))
"Michael Schenker Group","House of Blues Dallas","3/26"
The hard thing about regex in this case is making sure you know all the known possible characters in the title. If there are non-alpha chars in the 'Michael Schenker Group' part, you'll have to adjust the regex for that part to allow them.
The pattern above breaks down as follows, which is parsed left to right:
([\w\s]+) : Match any word or space characters (the plus symbol indicates that there should be one or more such characters). The parentheses mean that the match will be captured as a group. This is the "Michael Schenker Group " part. If there can be numbers and dashes here, you'll want to modify the pieces between the square brackets, which are the possible characters for the set.
\( : A literal parenthesis. The backslash escapes the parenthesis, since otherwise it counts as a regex command. This is the "(" part of the string.
([\w\s]+) : Same as the one above, but this time matches the "House of Blues Dallas " part. In parentheses so they will be captured as the second group.
(\d+/\d+) : Matches the digits 3 and 26 with a slash in the middle. In parentheses so they will be captured as the third group.
\) : Closing parenthesis for the above.
The python intro to regex is quite good, and you might want to spend an evening going over it http://docs.python.org/library/re.html#module-re. Also, check Dive Into Python, which has a friendly introduction: http://diveintopython3.ep.io/regular-expressions.html.
EDIT: See zacherates below, who has some nice edits. Two heads are better than one!

Regular expressions are a great solution to this problem:
>>> import re
>>> s = 'Michael Schenker Group (House of Blues Dallas 3/26'
>>> re.match(r'(.*) \((.*) (\d+/\d+)', s).groups()
('Michael Schenker Group', 'House of Blues Dallas', '3/26')
As a side note, you might want to look at the Universal Feed Parser for handling the RSS parsing as feeds have a bad habit of being malformed.
Edit
In regards to your comment... The strings occasionally being wrapped in "s rather than 's has to do with the fact that you're using repr. The repr of a string is usually delimited with 's, unless that string contains one or more 's, where instead it uses "s so that the 's don't have to be escaped:
>>> "Hello there"
'Hello there'
>>> "it's not its"
"it's not its"
Notice the different quote styles.

Regarding the repr(item.title[0:-1]) part, not sure where you got that from but I'm pretty sure you can simply use item.title. All you're doing is removing the last char from the string and then calling repr() on it, which does nothing.
Your code should look something like this:
import geocoders # from GeoPy
us = geocoders.GeocoderDotUS()
import feedparser # from www.feedparser.org
feedurl = "http://www.tourfilter.com/dallas/rss/by_concert_date"
feed = feedparser.parse(feedurl)
lines = []
for entry in feed.entries:
m = re.search(r'(.*) \((.*) (\d+/\d+)\)', entry.title)
if m:
bandRaw, venue, date = m.groups()
if band == bandRaw:
place, (lat, lng) = us.geocode(venue + ", Dallas, TX")
lines.append(",".join([band, venue, date, lat, lng]))
result = "\n".join(lines)
EDIT: replaced list with lines as the var name. list is a builtin and should not be used as a variable name. Sorry.