Develop Reference

python re regex matching in string with multiple () parenthesis

I have this string
cmd = "show run IP(k1) new Y(y1) add IP(dev.maintserial):Y(dev.maintkeys)"
What is a regex to first match exactly "IP(dev.maintserial):Y(dev.maintkeys)"
There might be a different path inside the parenthesis, like (name.dev.serial), so it is not like there will always be one dot there.
I though of something like this:
re.search('(IP\(.*?\):Y\(.*?\))', cmd) but this will also match the single IP(k1) and Y(y1
My usage will be:
If "IP(*):Y(*)" in cmd:
do substitution of IP(dev.maintserial):Y(dev.maintkeys) to Y(dev.maintkeys.IP(dev.maintserial))
How can I then do the above substitution? In the if condition I want to do this change in order: from IP(path_to_IP_key):Y(path_to_Y_key) to Y(path_to_Y_key.IP(path_to_IP_key)) , so IP is inside Y at the end after the dot.

This should work as it is more restrictive.
(IP\([^\)]+\):Y\(.*?\))
[^\)]+ means at least one character that isn't a closing parenthesis.
.*? in yours is too open ended allowing almost anything to be in until "):Y("

Something like this?
r"IP\(([^)]*\..+)\):Y\(([^)]*\..+)\)"
You can try it with your string. It matches the entire string IP(dev.maintserial):Y(dev.maintkeys) with groups dev.maintserial and dev.maintkeys.
The RE matches IP(, zero or more characters that are not a closing parenthesis ([^)]*), a period . (\.), one or more of any characters (.+), then ):Y(, ... (between the parentheses -- same as above), ).
Example Usage
import re
cmd = "show run IP(k1) new Y(y1) add IP(dev.maintserial):Y(dev.maintkeys)"
# compile regular expression
p = re.compile(r"IP\(([^)]*\..+)\):Y\(([^)]*\..+)\)")
s = p.search(cmd)
# if there is a match, s is not None
if s:
print(f"{s[0]}\n{s[1]}\n{s[2]}")
a = "Y(" + s[2] + ".IP(" + s[1] + "))"
print(f"\n{a}")
Above p.search(cmd) "[s]can[s] through [cmd] looking for the first location where this regular expression [p] produces a match, and return[s] a corresponding match object" (docs). None is the return value if there is no match. If there is a match, s[0] gives the entire match, s[1] gives the first parenthesized subgroup, and s[2] gives the second parenthesized subgroup (docs).
Output
IP(dev.maintserial):Y(dev.maintkeys)
dev.maintserial
dev.maintkeys
Y(dev.maintkeys.IP(dev.maintserial))

You can use 2 negated character classes [^()]* to match any character except parenthesis, and omit the outer capture group for a match only.
To prevent a partial word match, you might start matching IP with a word boundary \b
\bIP\([^()]*\):Y\([^()]*\)
Regex demo

Find String Between Two Substrings in Python When There is A Space After First Substring

While there are several posts on StackOverflow that are similar to this, none of them involve a situation when the target string is one space after one of the substrings.
I have the following string (example_string):
<insert_randomletters>[?] I want this string.Reduced<insert_randomletters>
I want to extract "I want this string." from the string above. The randomletters will always change, however the quote "I want this string." will always be between [?] (with a space after the last square bracket) and Reduced.
Right now, I can do the following to extract "I want this string".
target_quote_object = re.search('[?](.*?)Reduced', example_string)
target_quote_text = target_quote_object.group(1)
print(target_quote_text[2:])
This eliminates the ] and that always appear at the start of my extracted string, thus only printing "I want this string." However, this solution seems ugly, and I'd rather make re.search() return the current target string without any modification. How can I do this?

Your '[?](.*?)Reduced' pattern matches a literal ?, then captures any 0+ chars other than line break chars, as few as possible up to the first Reduced substring. That [?] is a character class formed with unescaped brackets, and the ? inside a character class is a literal ? char. That is why your Group 1 contains the ] and a space.
To make your regex match [?] you need to escape [ and ? and they will be matched as literal chars. Besides, you need to add a space after ] to actually make sure it does not land into Group 1. A better idea is to use \s* (0 or more whitespaces) or \s+ (1 or more occurrences).
Use
re.search(r'\[\?]\s*(.*?)Reduced', example_string)
See the regex demo.
import re
rx = r"\[\?]\s*(.*?)Reduced"
s = "<insert_randomletters>[?] I want this string.Reduced<insert_randomletters>"
m = re.search(r'\[\?]\s*(.*?)Reduced', s)
if m:
print(m.group(1))
# => I want this string.
See the Python demo.

Regex may not be necessary for this, provided your string is in a consistent format:
mystr = '<insert_randomletters>[?] I want this string.Reduced<insert_randomletters>'
res = mystr.split('Reduced')[0].split('] ')[1]
# 'I want this string.'

The solution turned out to be:
target_quote_object = re.search('] (.*?)Reduced', example_string)
target_quote_text = target_quote_object.group(1)
print(target_quote_text)
However, Wiktor's solution is better.

You [co]/[sho]uld use Positive Lookbehind (?<=\[\?\]) :
import re
pattern=r'(?<=\[\?\])(\s\w.+?)Reduced'
string_data='<insert_randomletters>[?] I want this string.Reduced<insert_randomletters>'
print(re.findall(pattern,string_data)[0].strip())
output:
I want this string.

Like the other answer, this might not be necessary. Or just too long-winded for Python.
This method uses one of the common string methods find.
str.find(sub,start,end) will return the index of the first occurrence of sub in the substring str[start:end] or returns -1 if none found.
In each iteration, the index of [?] is retrieved following with index of Reduced. Resulting substring is printed.
Every time this [?]...Reduced pattern is returned, the index is updated to the rest of the string. The search is continued from that index.
Code
s = ' [?] Nice to meet you.Reduced efweww [?] Who are you? Reduced<insert_randomletters>[?] I want this
string.Reduced<insert_randomletters>'
idx = s.find('[?]')
while idx is not -1:
start = idx
end = s.find('Reduced',idx)
print(s[start+3:end].strip())
idx = s.find('[?]',end)
Output
$ python splmat.py
Nice to meet you.
Who are you?
I want this string.

Python Regex Split Keeps Split Pattern Characters

Easiest way to explain this is an example:
I have this string: 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp'
Which I know how to split two different ways:
re.split('/', 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp') -> ['Docs', 'src', 'Scripts', 'temp']
re.split('(/)', 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp') -> ['Docs', '/', 'src', '/', 'Scripts', '/', 'temp']
Is there a way to split by the forward slash, but keep the slash part of the words?
For example, I want the above string to look like this:
['Docs/', '/src/', '/Scripts/', '/temp']
Any help would be appreciated!

Interesting question, I would suggest doing something like this:
>>> 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp'.replace('/', '/\x00/').split('\x00')
['Docs/', '/src/', '/Scripts/', '/temp']
The idea here is to first replace all / characters by two / characters separated by a special character that would not be a part of the original string. I used a null byte ('\x00'), but you could change this to something else, then finally split on that special character.
Regex isn't actually great here because you cannot split on zero-length matches, and re.findall() does not find overlapping matches, so you would potentially need to do several passes over the string.
Also, re.split('/', s) will do the same thing as s.split('/'), but the second is more efficient.

A solution without split() but with lookaheads:
>>> s = 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp'
>>> r = re.compile(r"(?=((?:^|/)[^/]*/?))")
>>> r.findall(s)
['Docs/', '/src/', '/Scripts/', '/temp']
Explanation:
(?= # Assert that it's possible to match...
( # and capture...
(?:^|/) # the start of the string or a slash
[^/]* # any number of non-slash characters
/? # and (optionally) an ending slash.
) # End of capturing group
) # End of lookahead
Since a lookahead assertion is tried at every position in the string and doesn't consume any characters, it doesn't have a problem with overlapping matches.

1) You do not need regular expressions to split on a single fixed character:
>>> 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp'.split('/')
['Docs', 'src', 'Scripts', 'temp']
2) Consider using this method:
import os.path
def components(path):
start = 0
for end, c in enumerate(path):
if c == os.path.sep:
yield path[start:end+1]
start = end
yield path[start:]
It doesn't rely on clever tricks like split-join-splitting, which makes it much more readable, in my opinion.

If you don't insist on having slashes on both sides, it's actually quite simple:
>>> re.findall(r"([^/]*/)", 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp')
['Docs/', 'src/', 'Scripts/']
Neither re nor split are really cut out for overlapping strings, so if that's what you really want, I'd just add a slash to the start of every result except the first.

Try about this:
re.split(r'(/)', 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp')
From python's documentation
re.split(pattern, string, maxsplit=0, flags=0)
Split string by the
occurrences of pattern. If capturing parentheses are used in pattern,
then the text of all groups in the pattern are also returned as part
of the resulting list. If maxsplit is nonzero, at most maxsplit splits
occur, and the remainder of the string is returned as the final
element of the list. (Incompatibility note: in the original Python 1.5
release, maxsplit was ignored. This has been fixed in later releases.)

I'm not sure there is an easy way to do this. This is the best I could come up with...
import re
lSplit = re.split('/', 'Docs/src/Scripts/temp')
print [lSplit[0]+'/'] + ['/'+x+'/' for x in lSplit][1:-1] + ['/'+lSplit[len(lSplit)-1]]
Kind of a mess, but it does do what you wanted.

Regular expression for repeating sequence

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.

Python Regular Expression Matching: ## ##

I'm searching a file line by line for the occurrence of ##random_string##. It works except for the case of multiple #...
pattern='##(.*?)##'
prog=re.compile(pattern)
string='lala ###hey## there'
result=prog.search(string)
print re.sub(result.group(1), 'FOUND', string)
Desired Output:
"lala #FOUND there"
Instead I get the following because its grabbing the whole ###hey##:
"lala FOUND there"
So how would I ignore any number of # at the beginning or end, and only capture "##string##".

To match at least two hashes at either end:
pattern='##+(.*?)##+'

Your problem is with your inner match. You use ., which matches any character that isn't a line end, and that means it matches # as well. So when it gets ###hey##, it matches (.*?) to #hey.
The easy solution is to exclude the # character from the matchable set:
prog = re.compile(r'##([^#]*)##')
Protip: Use raw strings (e.g. r'') for regular expressions so you don't have to go crazy with backslash escapes.
Trying to allow # inside the hashes will make things much more complicated.
EDIT: If you do not want to allow blank inner text (i.e. "####" shouldn't match with an inner text of ""), then change it to:
prog = re.compile(r'##([^#]+)##')
+ means "one or more."

'^#{2,}([^#]*)#{2,}' -- any number of # >= 2 on either end
be careful with using lazy quantifiers like (.*?) because it'd match '##abc#####' and capture 'abc###'. also lazy quantifiers are very slow

Try the "block comment trick": /##((?:[^#]|#[^#])+?)##/

Adding + to regex, which means to match one or more character.
pattern='#+(.*?)#+'
prog=re.compile(pattern)
string='###HEY##'
result=prog.search(string)
print result.group(1)
Output:
HEY

have you considered doing it non-regex way?
>>> string='lala ####hey## there'
>>> string.split("####")[1].split("#")[0]
'hey'

>>> import re
>>> text= 'lala ###hey## there'
>>> matcher= re.compile(r"##[^#]+##")
>>> print matcher.sub("FOUND", text)
lala #FOUND there
>>>