I would like to replace the ー to － in a regular expression like \d+(ー)\d+(ー)\d+. I tried re.sub but it will replace all the text including the numbers. Is it possible to replace the word in parentheses only?
e.g.
sub('\d+(ー)\d+(ー)\d+','4ー3ー1','-') returns '4-3-1'. Assume that simple replace cannot be used because there are other ー that do not satisfy the regular expression. My current solution is to split the text and do replacement on the part which satisfy the regular expression.
You may use the Group Reference here.
import re
before = '4ー3ー1ーー4ー31'
after = re.sub(r'(\d+)ー(\d+)ー(\d+)', r'\1-\2-\3', before)
print(after) # '4-3-1ーー4ー31'
Here, r'\1' is the reference to the first group, a.k.a, the first parentheses.
You could use a function for the repl argument in re.sub to only touch the match groups.
import re
s = '1234ー2134ー5124'
re.sub("\d+(ー)\d+(ー)\d+", lambda x: x.group(0).replace('ー', '-'), s)
Using a slightly different pattern, you might be able to take advantage of a lookahead expression which does not consume the part of string it matches to. That is to say, a lookahead/lookbehind will match on a pattern with the condition that it also matches the component in the lookahead/lookbehind expression (rather than the entire pattern.)
re.sub("ー(?=\d+)", "-", s)
If you can live with a fixed-length expression for the part preceding the emdash you can combine the lookahead with a lookbehind to make the regex a little more conservative.
re.sub("(?<=\d)ー(?=\d+)", "-", s)
re.sub('\d+(ー)\d+(ー)\d+','4ー3ー1','-')
Like you pointed out, the output of the regular expression will be '-'. because you are trying to replace the entire pattern with a '-'. to replace the ー to － you can use
import re
input_string = '4ー3ー1'
re.sub('ー','-', input_string)
or you could do a find all on the digits and join the string with a '-'
'-'.join(re.findall('\d+', input_string))
both methods should give you '4-3-1'
Related
Using the python re.sub, is there a way I can extract the first alpha numeric characters and disregard the rest form a string that starts with a special character and might have special characters in the middle of the string? For example:
re.sub('[^A-Za-z0-9]','', '#my,name')
How do I just get "my"?
re.sub('[^A-Za-z0-9]','', '#my')
Here I would also want it to just return 'my'.
re.sub(".*?([A-Za-z0-9]+).*", r"\1", str)
The \1 in the replacement is equivalent to matchobj.group(1). In other words it replaces the whole string with just what was matched by the part of the regexp inside the brackets. $ could be added at the end of the regexp for clarity, but it is not necessary because the final .* will be greedy (match as many characters as possible).
This solution does suffer from the problem that if the string doesn't match (which would happen if it contains no alphanumeric characters), then it will simply return the original string. It might be better to attempt a match, then test whether it actually matches, and handle separately the case that it doesn't. Such a solution might look like:
matchobj = re.match(".*?([A-Za-z0-9]+).*", str)
if matchobj:
print(matchobj.group(1))
else:
print("did not match")
But the question called for the use of re.sub.
Instead of re.sub it is easier to do matching using re.search or re.findall.
Using re.search:
>>> s = '#my,name'
>>> res = re.search(r'[a-zA-Z\d]+', s)
>>> if res:
... print (res.group())
...
my
Code Demo
This is not a complete answer. [A-Za-z]+ will give give you ['my','name']
Use this to further explore: https://regex101.com/
I have a string "F(foo)", and I'd like to replace that string with "F('foo')". I know we can also use regular expression in the second parameter and do this replacement using re.sub(r"F\(foo\)", r"F\('foo'\)",str). But the problem here is, foo is a dynamic string variable. It is different every time we want to do this replacement. Is it possible by some sort of regex, to do such replacement in a cleaner way?
I remember one way to extract foo using () and then .group(1). But this would require me to define one more temporary variable just to store foo. I'm curious if there is a way by which we can replace "F(foo)" with "F('foo')" in a single line or in other words in a more cleaner way.
Examples :
F(name) should be replaced with F('name').
F(id) should be replaced with F('id').
G(name) should not be replaced.
So, the regex would be r"F\((\w)+\)" to find such strings.
Using re.sub
Ex:
import re
s = "F(foo)"
print(re.sub(r"\((.*)\)", r"('\1')", s))
Output:
F('foo')
The following regex encloses valid [Python|C|Java] identifiers after F and in parentheses in single quotation marks:
re.sub(r"F\(([_a-z][_a-z0-9]+)\)", r"F('\1')", s, flags=re.I)
#"F('foo')"
There are several ways, depending on what foo actually is.
If it can't contain ( or ), you can just replace ( with (' and ) with '). Otherwise, try using
re.sub(r"F\((.*)\)", r"F('\1')", yourstring)
where the \1 in the replacement part will reference the (.*) capture group in the search regex
In your pattern F\((\w)+\) you are almost there, you just need to put the quantifier + after the \w to repeat matching 1+ word characters.
If you put it after the capturing group, you repeat the group which will give you the value of the last iteration in the capturing group which would be the second o in foo.
You could update your expression to:
F\((\w+)\)
And in the replacement refer to the capturing group using \1
F('\1')
For example:
import re
str = "F(foo)"
print(re.sub(r"F\((\w+)\)", r"F('\1')", str)) # F('foo')
Python demo
I'm trying to produce a python regex to represent identifiers for a lexical analyzer. My approach is:
([a-zA-Z]([a-zA-Z]|\d)*)
When I use this in:
regex = re.compile("\s*([a-zA-Z]([a-zA-Z]|\d)*)")
regex.findall(line)
It doesn't produce a list of identifiers like it should. Have I built the expression incorrectly?
What's a good way to represent the form:
alpha(alpha|digit)*
With the python re module?
like this:
regex = re.compile(r'[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z\d]*')
Note the r before the quote to obtain a raw string, otherwise you need to escape all backslashes.
Since the \s* before is optional, you can remove it, like capture groups.
If you want to ensure that the match isn't preceded by a digit, you can write it like this with a negative lookbehind (?<!...):
regex = re.compile(r'(?:^|(?<![\da-zA-Z]))[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z\d]*')
Note that with re.compile you can use the case insensitive option:
regex = re.compile(r'(?:^|(?<![\da-z]))[a-z][a-z\d]*', re.I)
How can I get the string embedded in {} after a keyword, where the number of characters between the keyword and the braces {} is unknown. e.g.:
includegraphics[x=2]{image.pdf}
the keyword would be includegraphics and the string to be found is image.pdf, but the text in between [x=2] could have anything between the two [].
So I want to ignore all characters between the keyword and { or I want to ignore everything between []
Use re.findall
>>> sample = 'includegraphics[x=2]{image.pdf}'
>>> re.findall('includegraphics.*?{(.*?)}',sample)
['image.pdf']
Explanation:
The re module deals with regular expressions in Python. Its findall method is useful to find all occurences of a pattern in a string.
A regular expression for the pattern you are interested in is 'includegraphics.*?{(.*?)}'. Here . symbolizes "any character", while the * means 0 or more times. The question mark makes this a non-greedy operation. From the documentation:
The *, +, and ? qualifiers are all greedy; they match as much
text as possible. Sometimes this behaviour isn’t desired; if the RE
<.*> is matched against <H1\>title</H1>, it will match the entire
string, and not just <H1>. Adding ? after the qualifier makes it
perform the match in non-greedy or minimal fashion; as few characters
as possible will be matched. Using .*? in the previous expression will
match only <H1>.
Please note that while in your case using .*? should be fine, in general it's better to use more specialized character groups such as \w for alphanumerics and \d for digits, when you know what the content is going to consist of in advance.
Use re.search
re.search(r'includegraphics\[[^\[\]]*\]\{([^}]*)\}', s).group(1)
In Python in the re module there is the following function:
re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0) – Return the string obtained by replacing the leftmost non-overlapping occurrences of pattern in string by the replacement repl. If the pattern isn’t found, string is returned unchanged.
I've found it can work like this:
print re.sub('[a-z]*\d+','lion','zebra432') # prints 'lion'
I was wondering, is there an easy way to use regular expressions in the replacement string, so that the replacement string contains part of the original regular expression/original string? Specifically, can I do something like this (which doesn't work)?
print re.sub('[a-z]*\d+', 'lion\d+', 'zebra432')
I want that to print 'lion432'. Obviously, it does not. Rather, it prints 'lion\d+'. Is there an easy way to use parts of the matching regular expression in the replacement string?
By the way, this is NOT a special case. Please do NOT assume that the number will always come at the end, the words will always come in the beginning, etc. I want to know a solution to all regexes in general.
Thanks
Place \d+ in a capture group (...) and then use \1 to refer to it:
>>> import re
>>> re.sub('[a-z]*(\d+)', r'lion\1', 'zebra432')
'lion432'
>>>
>>> # You can also refer to more than one capture group
>>> re.sub('([a-z]*)(\d+)', r'\1lion\2', 'zebra432')
'zebralion432'
>>>
From the docs:
Backreferences, such as \6, are replaced with the substring matched
by group 6 in the pattern.
Note that you will also need to use a raw-string so that \1 is not treated as an escape sequence.