Python - Splitting numbers and letters into sub-strings with regular expression - python

I am creating a metric measurement converter. The user is expected to enter in an expression such as 125km (a number followed by a unit abbreviation). For conversion, the numerical value must be split from the abbreviation, producing a result such as [125, 'km']. I have done this with a regular expression, re.split, however it produces unwanted item in the resulting list:
import re
s = '125km'
print(re.split('(\d+)', s))
Output:
['', '125', 'km']
I do not need nor want the beginning ''. How can I simply separate the numerical part of the string from the alphabetical part to produce a list using a regular expression?

What's wrong with re.findall ?
>>> s = '125km'
>>> re.findall(r'[A-Za-z]+|\d+', s)
['125', 'km']
[A-Za-z]+ matches one or more alphabets. | or \d+ one or more digits.
OR
Use list comprehension.
>>> [i for i in re.split(r'([A-Za-z]+)', s) if i]
['125', 'km']
>>> [i for i in re.split(r'(\d+)', s) if i]
['125', 'km']

Split a string into list of sub-string (number and others)
Using program:
s = "125km1234string"
sub = []
char = ""
num = ""
for letter in s:
if letter.isdigit():
if char:
sub.append(char)
char = ""
num += letter
else:
if num:
sub.append(num)
num = ""
char += letter
sub.append(char) if char else sub.append(num)
print(sub)
Output
['125', 'km', '1234', 'string']

Related

Regex in re To Match Word with More Than 2 Numbers

I want to use re to find words that have more than two numbers anywhere in the word, so I want to return:
aaabbbccc123
but not:
aaabbbccc12
The only trick is that the numbers should be able to appear anywhere:
aaa1bbb2ccc3 aaa12bbbccc3, etc.
You don't need re for this:
import string
len([x for x in "aaabbbccc123" if x in string.digits]) > 2 # True
len([x for x in "aaabb1bccc2" if x in string.digits]) > 2 # False
len([x for x in "aa1abb2bccc3" if x in string.digits]) > 2 # False
You could use function re.findall to find all numbers in string with pattern \d. re.findall will return an array with numbers founded. Then, you use function len to get length of array.
I also test result on Python.
import re
string = "aaabbbccc123"
resultStringOne = re.findall(r"\d", string)
if len(resultStringOne) > 2:
print("resultStringOne")
print(resultStringOne)
string = "aaabbbccc12"
resultStringTwo = re.findall(r"\d", string)
if len(resultStringTwo) > 2:
print("resultStringTwo")
print(resultStringTwo)
string = "aaa1bbb2ccc3 aaa12bbbccc3"
resultStringThree = re.findall(r"\d", string)
if len(resultStringThree) > 2:
print("resultStringThree")
print(resultStringThree)
Result
resultStringOne
['1', '2', '3']
resultStringThree
['1', '2', '3', '1', '2', '3']
import re
arr = ["aaabbbccc123","aaabbbccc12","aaa1bbb2ccc3 aaa12bbbccc3"]
for x in arr:
m = re.match(r"(.*\d.*\d.*\d.*)",x)
if(m) : print(m.group(1))
result
aaabbbccc123
aaa1bbb2ccc3 aaa12bbbccc3
This can be done using a single regex as this:
^(?=(?:\d?[a-zA-Z]){3})(?:(?:[a-zA-Z]{3,})?\d){3}
RegEx Demo
RegEx Details:
^: Start
(?=(?:\d?[a-zA-Z]){3}): Lookahead to assert at least 3 letters
(?:(?:[a-zA-Z]{3,})?\d){3}: Match at least 3 instances of this group. Inside the group we match 3+ letters followed by a single digit.
Code:
>>> import re
>>> reg = re.compile(r'^(?=(?:\d?[a-zA-Z]){3})(?:(?:[a-zA-Z]{3,})?\d){3}')
>>> arr = ['aaabbbccc123', 'aaa1bbb2ccc3', 'aaa12bbbccc3', 'aaabbbccc12', 'aaa3bbbccc1', '123']
>>> for el in arr:
... print(reg.findall(el))
...
['aaabbbccc123']
['aaa1bbb2ccc3']
['aaa12bbbccc3']
[]
[]
[]
For matching words with two or more consecutive digits, which may be helpful to someone arriving here from a search ...
(?<=\s)[a-zA-Z0-9]*[0-9]{2}.*?\b
The Thân examples in his question are included in a demo of this at regex101, which anyone can modify for a new URL with their own improvements using CTRL-s, no login required.
It's for a string intended for use in re.sub(). It matches aaabbbccc123 so long as there's a leading space. It matches 12a and a12 but not 1a2
This just addresses consecutive digits.
The following, \b.*?\d\d.*?\b fails by catching preceding words. Why?
[Updated]

How to compare reverse strings in list of strings with the original list of strings in python?

Input a given string and check if any word in that string matches with its reverse in the same string then print that word else print $
I split the string and put the words in a list and then I reversed the words in that list. After that, I couldn't able to compare both the lists.
str = input()
x = str.split()
for i in x: # printing i shows the words in the list
str1 = i[::-1] # printing str1 shows the reverse of words in a new list
# now how to check if any word of the new list matches to any word of the old list
if(i==str):
print(i)
break
else:
print('$)
Input: suman is a si boy.
Output: is ( since reverse of 'is' is present in the same string)
You almost have it, just need to add another loop to compare each word against each inverted word. Try using the following
str = input()
x = str.split()
for i in x:
str1 = i[::-1]
for j in x: # <-- this is the new nested loop you are missing
if j == str1: # compare each inverted word against each regular word
if len(str1) > 1: # Potential condition if you would like to not include single letter words
print(i)
Update
To only print the first occurrence of a match, you could, in the second loop, only check the elements that come after. We can do this by keeping track of the index:
str = input()
x = str.split()
for index, i in enumerate(x):
str1 = i[::-1]
for j in x[index+1:]: # <-- only consider words that are ahead
if j == str1:
if len(str1) > 1:
print(i)
Note that I used index+1 in order to not consider single word palindromes a match.
a = 'suman is a si boy'
# Construct the list of words
words = a.split(' ')
# Construct the list of reversed words
reversed_words = [word[::-1] for word in words]
# Get an intersection of these lists converted to sets
print(set(words) & set(reversed_words))
will print:
{'si', 'is', 'a'}
Another way to do this is just in a list comprehension:
string = 'suman is a si boy'
output = [x for x in string.split() if x[::-1] in string.split()]
print(output)
The split on string creates a list split on spaces. Then the word is included only if the reverse is in the string.
Output is:
['is', 'a', 'si']
One note, you have a variable name str. Best not to do that as str is a Python thing and could cause other issues in your code later on.
If you want word more than one letter long then you can do:
string = 'suman is a si boy'
output = [x for x in string.split() if x[::-1] in string.split() and len(x) > 1]
print(output)
this gives:
['is', 'si']
Final Answer...
And for the final thought, in order to get just the 'is':
string = 'suman is a si boy'
seen = []
output = [x for x in string.split() if x[::-1] not in seen and not seen.append(x) and x[::-1] in string.split() and len(x) > 1]
print(output)
output is:
['is']
BUT, this is not necessarily a good way to do it, I don't believe. Basically you are storing information in seen during the list comprehension AND referencing that same list. :)
This answer wouldn't show you 'a' and won't output 'is' with 'si'.
str = input() #get input string
x = str.split() #returns list of words
y = [] #list of words
while len(x) > 0 :
a = x.pop(0) #removes first item from list and returns it, then assigns it to a
if a[::-1] in x: #checks if the reversed word is in the list of words
#the list doesn't contain that word anymore so 'a' that doesn't show twice wouldn't be returned
#and 'is' that is present with 'si' will be evaluated once
y.append(a)
print(y) # ['is']

Splitting string using different scenarios using regex

I have 2 scenarios so split a string
scenario 1:
"##$hello?? getting good.<li>hii"
I want to be split as 'hello','getting','good.<li>hii (Scenario 1)
'hello','getting','good','li,'hi' (Scenario 2)
Any ideas please??
Something like this should work:
>>> re.split(r"[^\w<>.]+", s) # or re.split(r"[##$? ]+", s)
['', 'hello', 'getting', 'good.<li>hii']
>>> re.split(r"[^\w]+", s)
['', 'hello', 'getting', 'good', 'li', 'hii']
This might be what your looking for \w+ it matches any digit or letter from 1 to n times as many times as possible. Here is a working Java-Script
var value = "##$hello?? getting good.<li>hii";
var matches = value.match(
new RegExp("\\w+", "gi")
);
console.log(matches)
It works by using \w+ which matches word characters as many times as possible. You cound also use [A-Za-b] to match only letters which not numbers. As show here.
var value = "##$hello?? getting good.<li>hii777bloop";
var matches = value.match(
new RegExp("[A-Za-z]+", "gi")
);
console.log(matches)
It matches what are in the brackets 1 to n timeas as many as possible. In this case the range a-z of lower case charactors and the range of A-Z uppder case characters. Hope this is what you want.
For first scenario just use regex to find all words that are contain word characters and <>.:
In [60]: re.findall(r'[\w<>.]+', s)
Out[60]: ['hello', 'getting', 'good.<li>hii']
For second one you need to repleace the repeated characters only if they are not valid english words, you can do this using nltk corpus, and re.sub regex:
In [61]: import nltk
In [62]: english_vocab = set(w.lower() for w in nltk.corpus.words.words())
In [63]: repeat_regexp = re.compile(r'(\w*)(\w)\2(\w*)')
In [64]: [repeat_regexp.sub(r'\1\2\3', word) if word not in english_vocab else word for word in re.findall(r'[^\W]+', s)]
Out[64]: ['hello', 'getting', 'good', 'li', 'hi']
In case you are looking for solution without regex. string.punctuation will give you list of all special characters.
Use this list with list comprehension for achieving your desired result as:
>>> import string
>>> my_string = '##$hello?? getting good.<li>hii'
>>> ''.join([(' ' if s in string.punctuation else s) for s in my_string]).split()
['hello', 'getting', 'good', 'li', 'hii'] # desired output
Explanation: Below is the step by step instruction regarding how it works:
import string # Importing the 'string' module
special_char_string = string.punctuation
# Value of 'special_char_string': '!"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?#[\\]^_`{|}~'
my_string = '##$hello?? getting good.<li>hii'
# Generating list of character in sample string with
# special character replaced with whitespace
my_list = [(' ' if item in special_char_string else item) for item in my_string]
# Join the list to form string
my_string = ''.join(my_list)
# Split it based on space
my_desired_list = my_string.strip().split()
The value of my_desired_list will be:
['hello', 'getting', 'good', 'li', 'hii']

How to do CamelCase split in python

What I was trying to achieve, was something like this:
>>> camel_case_split("CamelCaseXYZ")
['Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']
>>> camel_case_split("XYZCamelCase")
['XYZ', 'Camel', 'Case']
So I searched and found this perfect regular expression:
(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])|(?<=[A-Z])(?=[A-Z][a-z])
As the next logical step I tried:
>>> re.split("(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])|(?<=[A-Z])(?=[A-Z][a-z])", "CamelCaseXYZ")
['CamelCaseXYZ']
Why does this not work, and how do I achieve the result from the linked question in python?
Edit: Solution summary
I tested all provided solutions with a few test cases:
string: ''
AplusKminus: ['']
casimir_et_hippolyte: []
two_hundred_success: []
kalefranz: string index out of range # with modification: either [] or ['']
string: ' '
AplusKminus: [' ']
casimir_et_hippolyte: []
two_hundred_success: [' ']
kalefranz: [' ']
string: 'lower'
all algorithms: ['lower']
string: 'UPPER'
all algorithms: ['UPPER']
string: 'Initial'
all algorithms: ['Initial']
string: 'dromedaryCase'
AplusKminus: ['dromedary', 'Case']
casimir_et_hippolyte: ['dromedary', 'Case']
two_hundred_success: ['dromedary', 'Case']
kalefranz: ['Dromedary', 'Case'] # with modification: ['dromedary', 'Case']
string: 'CamelCase'
all algorithms: ['Camel', 'Case']
string: 'ABCWordDEF'
AplusKminus: ['ABC', 'Word', 'DEF']
casimir_et_hippolyte: ['ABC', 'Word', 'DEF']
two_hundred_success: ['ABC', 'Word', 'DEF']
kalefranz: ['ABCWord', 'DEF']
In summary you could say the solution by #kalefranz does not match the question (see the last case) and the solution by #casimir et hippolyte eats a single space, and thereby violates the idea that a split should not change the individual parts. The only difference among the remaining two alternatives is that my solution returns a list with the empty string on an empty string input and the solution by #200_success returns an empty list.
I don't know how the python community stands on that issue, so I say: I am fine with either one. And since 200_success's solution is simpler, I accepted it as the correct answer.
As #AplusKminus has explained, re.split() never splits on an empty pattern match. Therefore, instead of splitting, you should try finding the components you are interested in.
Here is a solution using re.finditer() that emulates splitting:
def camel_case_split(identifier):
matches = finditer('.+?(?:(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])|(?<=[A-Z])(?=[A-Z][a-z])|$)', identifier)
return [m.group(0) for m in matches]
Use re.sub() and split()
import re
name = 'CamelCaseTest123'
splitted = re.sub('([A-Z][a-z]+)', r' \1', re.sub('([A-Z]+)', r' \1', name)).split()
Result
'CamelCaseTest123' -> ['Camel', 'Case', 'Test123']
'CamelCaseXYZ' -> ['Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']
'XYZCamelCase' -> ['XYZ', 'Camel', 'Case']
'XYZ' -> ['XYZ']
'IPAddress' -> ['IP', 'Address']
Most of the time when you don't need to check the format of a string, a global research is more simple than a split (for the same result):
re.findall(r'[A-Z](?:[a-z]+|[A-Z]*(?=[A-Z]|$))', 'CamelCaseXYZ')
returns
['Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']
To deal with dromedary too, you can use:
re.findall(r'[A-Z]?[a-z]+|[A-Z]+(?=[A-Z]|$)', 'camelCaseXYZ')
Note: (?=[A-Z]|$) can be shorten using a double negation (a negative lookahead with a negated character class): (?![^A-Z])
Working solution, without regexp
I am not that good at regexp. I like to use them for search/replace in my IDE but I try to avoid them in programs.
Here is a quite straightforward solution in pure python:
def camel_case_split(s):
idx = list(map(str.isupper, s))
# mark change of case
l = [0]
for (i, (x, y)) in enumerate(zip(idx, idx[1:])):
if x and not y: # "Ul"
l.append(i)
elif not x and y: # "lU"
l.append(i+1)
l.append(len(s))
# for "lUl", index of "U" will pop twice, have to filter that
return [s[x:y] for x, y in zip(l, l[1:]) if x < y]



And some tests
TESTS = [
("XYZCamelCase", ['XYZ', 'Camel', 'Case']),
("CamelCaseXYZ", ['Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']),
("CamelCaseXYZa", ['Camel', 'Case', 'XY', 'Za']),
("XYZCamelCaseXYZ", ['XYZ', 'Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']),
("aCamelCaseWordT", ['a', 'Camel', 'Case', 'Word', 'T']),
("CamelCaseWordT", ['Camel', 'Case', 'Word', 'T']),
("CamelCaseWordTa", ['Camel', 'Case', 'Word', 'Ta']),
("aCamelCaseWordTa", ['a', 'Camel', 'Case', 'Word', 'Ta']),
("Ta", ['Ta']),
("aT", ['a', 'T']),
("a", ['a']),
("T", ['T']),
("", []),
]
def test():
for (q,a) in TESTS:
assert camel_case_split(q) == a
if __name__ == "__main__":
test()
Edit: a solution which streams data in one pass
This solution leverages the fact that the decision to split word or not can be taken locally, just considering the current character and the previous one.
def camel_case_split(s):
u = True # case of previous char
w = b = '' # current word, buffer for last uppercase letter
for c in s:
o = c.isupper()
if u and o:
w += b
b = c
elif u and not o:
if len(w)>0:
yield w
w = b + c
b = ''
elif not u and o:
yield w
w = ''
b = c
else: # not u and not o:
w += c
u = o
if len(w)>0 or len(b)>0: # flush
yield w + b
It is theoretically faster and lesser memory usage.
same tests suite applies
but list must be built by caller
def test():
for (q,a) in TESTS:
r = list(camel_case_split(q))
print(q,a,r)
assert r == a
Try it online
I just stumbled upon this case and wrote a regular expression to solve it. It should work for any group of words, actually.
RE_WORDS = re.compile(r'''
# Find words in a string. Order matters!
[A-Z]+(?=[A-Z][a-z]) | # All upper case before a capitalized word
[A-Z]?[a-z]+ | # Capitalized words / all lower case
[A-Z]+ | # All upper case
\d+ # Numbers
''', re.VERBOSE)
The key here is the lookahead on the first possible case. It will match (and preserve) uppercase words before capitalized ones:
assert RE_WORDS.findall('FOOBar') == ['FOO', 'Bar']
import re
re.split('(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])', 'camelCamelCAMEL')
# ['camel', 'Camel', 'CAMEL'] <-- result
# '(?<=[a-z])' --> means preceding lowercase char (group A)
# '(?=[A-Z])' --> means following UPPERCASE char (group B)
# '(group A)(group B)' --> 'aA' or 'aB' or 'bA' and so on
The documentation for python's re.split says:
Note that split will never split a string on an empty pattern match.
When seeing this:
>>> re.findall("(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])|(?<=[A-Z])(?=[A-Z][a-z])", "CamelCaseXYZ")
['', '']
it becomes clear, why the split does not work as expected. The remodule finds empty matches, just as intended by the regular expression.
Since the documentation states that this is not a bug, but rather intended behavior, you have to work around that when trying to create a camel case split:
def camel_case_split(identifier):
matches = finditer('(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])|(?<=[A-Z])(?=[A-Z][a-z])', identifier)
split_string = []
# index of beginning of slice
previous = 0
for match in matches:
# get slice
split_string.append(identifier[previous:match.start()])
# advance index
previous = match.start()
# get remaining string
split_string.append(identifier[previous:])
return split_string
This solution also supports numbers, spaces, and auto remove underscores:
def camel_terms(value):
return re.findall('[A-Z][a-z]+|[0-9A-Z]+(?=[A-Z][a-z])|[0-9A-Z]{2,}|[a-z0-9]{2,}|[a-zA-Z0-9]', value)
Some tests:
tests = [
"XYZCamelCase",
"CamelCaseXYZ",
"Camel_CaseXYZ",
"3DCamelCase",
"Camel5Case",
"Camel5Case5D",
"Camel Case XYZ"
]
for test in tests:
print(test, "=>", camel_terms(test))
results:
XYZCamelCase => ['XYZ', 'Camel', 'Case']
CamelCaseXYZ => ['Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']
Camel_CaseXYZ => ['Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']
3DCamelCase => ['3D', 'Camel', 'Case']
Camel5Case => ['Camel', '5', 'Case']
Camel5Case5D => ['Camel', '5', 'Case', '5D']
Camel Case XYZ => ['Camel', 'Case', 'XYZ']
Simple solution:
re.sub(r"([a-z0-9])([A-Z])", r"\1 \2", str(text))
Here's another solution that requires less code and no complicated regular expressions:
def camel_case_split(string):
bldrs = [[string[0].upper()]]
for c in string[1:]:
if bldrs[-1][-1].islower() and c.isupper():
bldrs.append([c])
else:
bldrs[-1].append(c)
return [''.join(bldr) for bldr in bldrs]
Edit
The above code contains an optimization that avoids rebuilding the entire string with every appended character. Leaving out that optimization, a simpler version (with comments) might look like
def camel_case_split2(string):
# set the logic for creating a "break"
def is_transition(c1, c2):
return c1.islower() and c2.isupper()
# start the builder list with the first character
# enforce upper case
bldr = [string[0].upper()]
for c in string[1:]:
# get the last character in the last element in the builder
# note that strings can be addressed just like lists
previous_character = bldr[-1][-1]
if is_transition(previous_character, c):
# start a new element in the list
bldr.append(c)
else:
# append the character to the last string
bldr[-1] += c
return bldr
I know that the question added the tag of regex. But still, I always try to stay as far away from regex as possible. So, here is my solution without regex:
def split_camel(text, char):
if len(text) <= 1: # To avoid adding a wrong space in the beginning
return text+char
if char.isupper() and text[-1].islower(): # Regular Camel case
return text + " " + char
elif text[-1].isupper() and char.islower() and text[-2] != " ": # Detect Camel case in case of abbreviations
return text[:-1] + " " + text[-1] + char
else: # Do nothing part
return text + char
text = "PathURLFinder"
text = reduce(split_camel, a, "")
print text
# prints "Path URL Finder"
print text.split(" ")
# prints "['Path', 'URL', 'Finder']"
EDIT:
As suggested, here is the code to put the functionality in a single function.
def split_camel(text):
def splitter(text, char):
if len(text) <= 1: # To avoid adding a wrong space in the beginning
return text+char
if char.isupper() and text[-1].islower(): # Regular Camel case
return text + " " + char
elif text[-1].isupper() and char.islower() and text[-2] != " ": # Detect Camel case in case of abbreviations
return text[:-1] + " " + text[-1] + char
else: # Do nothing part
return text + char
converted_text = reduce(splitter, text, "")
return converted_text.split(" ")
split_camel("PathURLFinder")
# prints ['Path', 'URL', 'Finder']
Putting a more comprehensive approach otu ther. It takes care of several issues like numbers, string starting with lower case, single letter words etc.
def camel_case_split(identifier, remove_single_letter_words=False):
"""Parses CamelCase and Snake naming"""
concat_words = re.split('[^a-zA-Z]+', identifier)
def camel_case_split(string):
bldrs = [[string[0].upper()]]
string = string[1:]
for idx, c in enumerate(string):
if bldrs[-1][-1].islower() and c.isupper():
bldrs.append([c])
elif c.isupper() and (idx+1) < len(string) and string[idx+1].islower():
bldrs.append([c])
else:
bldrs[-1].append(c)
words = [''.join(bldr) for bldr in bldrs]
words = [word.lower() for word in words]
return words
words = []
for word in concat_words:
if len(word) > 0:
words.extend(camel_case_split(word))
if remove_single_letter_words:
subset_words = []
for word in words:
if len(word) > 1:
subset_words.append(word)
if len(subset_words) > 0:
words = subset_words
return words
My requirement was a bit more specific than the OP. In particular, in addition to handling all OP cases, I needed the following which the other solutions do not provide:
- treat all non-alphanumeric input (e.g. !##$%^&*() etc) as a word separator
- handle digits as follows:
- cannot be in the middle of a word
- cannot be at the beginning of the word unless the phrase starts with a digit
def splitWords(s):
new_s = re.sub(r'[^a-zA-Z0-9]', ' ', # not alphanumeric
re.sub(r'([0-9]+)([^0-9])', '\\1 \\2', # digit followed by non-digit
re.sub(r'([a-z])([A-Z])','\\1 \\2', # lower case followed by upper case
re.sub(r'([A-Z])([A-Z][a-z])', '\\1 \\2', # upper case followed by upper case followed by lower case
s
)
)
)
)
return [x for x in new_s.split(' ') if x]
Output:
for test in ['', ' ', 'lower', 'UPPER', 'Initial', 'dromedaryCase', 'CamelCase', 'ABCWordDEF', 'CamelCaseXYZand123.how23^ar23e you doing AndABC123XYZdf']:
print test + ':' + str(splitWords(test))
:[]
:[]
lower:['lower']
UPPER:['UPPER']
Initial:['Initial']
dromedaryCase:['dromedary', 'Case']
CamelCase:['Camel', 'Case']
ABCWordDEF:['ABC', 'Word', 'DEF']
CamelCaseXYZand123.how23^ar23e you doing AndABC123XYZdf:['Camel', 'Case', 'XY', 'Zand123', 'how23', 'ar23', 'e', 'you', 'doing', 'And', 'ABC123', 'XY', 'Zdf']
Maybe this will be enough to for some people:
a = "SomeCamelTextUpper"
def camelText(val):
return ''.join([' ' + i if i.isupper() else i for i in val]).strip()
print(camelText(a))
It dosen't work with the type "CamelXYZ", but with 'typical' CamelCase scenario should work just fine.
I think below is the optimim
Def count_word():
Return(re.findall(‘[A-Z]?[a-z]+’, input(‘please enter your string’))
Print(count_word())

python regular expression, pulling all letters out

Is there a better way to pull A and F from this: A13:F20
a="A13:F20"
import re
pattern = re.compile(r'\D+\d+\D+')
matches = re.search(pattern, a)
num = matches.group(0)
print num[0]
print num[len(num)-1]
output
A
F
note: the digits are of unknown length
You don't have to use regular expressions, or re at all. Assuming you want just letters to remain, you could do something like this:
a = "A13:F20"
a = filter(lambda x: x.isalpha(), a)
I'd do it like this:
>>> re.findall(r'[a-z]', a, re.IGNORECASE)
['A', 'F']
Use a simple list comprehension, as a filter and get only the alphabets from the actual string.
print [char for char in input_string if char.isalpha()]
# ['A', 'F']
You could use re.sub:
>>> a="A13.F20"
>>> re.sub(r'[^A-Z]', '', a) # Remove everything apart from A-Z
'AF'
>>> re.sub(r'[A-Z]', '', a) # Remove A-Z
'13.20'
>>>
If you're working with strings that all have the same format, you can just cut out substrings:
a="A13:F20"
print a[0], a[4]
More on python slicing in this answer:
Is there a way to substring a string in Python?

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