Develop Reference

strange output regular expression r'[-.\:alnum:](.*)'

I expect to fetch all alphanumeric characters after "-"
For an example:
>>> str1 = "12 - mystr"
>>> re.findall(r'[-.\:alnum:](.*)', str1)
[' mystr']
First, it's strange that white space is considered alphanumeric, while I expected to get ['mystr'].
Second, I cannot understand why this can be fetched, if there is no "-":
>>> str2 = "qwertyuio"
>>> re.findall(r'[-.\:alnum:](.*)', str2)
['io']

First of all, Python re does not support POSIX character classes.
The white space is not considered alphanumeric, your first pattern matches - with [-.\:alnum:] and then (.*) captures into Group 1 all 0 or more chars other than a newline. The [-.\:alnum:] pattern matches one char that is either -, ., :, a, l, n, u or m. Thus, when run against the qwertyuio, u is matched and io is captured into Group 1.
Alphanumeric chars can be matched with the [^\W_] pattern. So, to capture all alphanumeric chars after - that is followed with 0+ whitespaces you may use
re.findall(r'-\s*([^\W_]+)', s)
See the regex demo
Details
- - a hyphen
\s* - 0+ whitespaces
([^\W_]+) - Capturing group 1: one or more (+) chars that are letters or digits.
Python demo:
print(re.findall(r'-\s*([^\W_]+)', '12 - mystr')) # => ['mystr']
print(re.findall(r'-\s*([^\W_]+)', 'qwertyuio')) # => []

Your regex says: "Find any one of the characters -.:alnum, then capture any amount of any characters into the first capture group".
In the first test, it found - for the first character, then captured mystr in the first capture group. If any groups are in the regex, findall returns list of found groups, not the matches, so the matched - is not included.
Your second test found u as one of the -.:alnum characters (as none of qwerty matched any), then captured and returned the rest after it, io.
As #revo notes in comments, [....] is a character class - matching any one character in it. In order to include a POSIX character class (like [:alnum:]) inside it, you need two sets of brackets. Also, there is no order in a character class; the fact that you included - inside it just means it would be one of the matched characters, not that alphanumeric characters would be matched without it. Finally, if you want to match any number of alphanumerics, you have your quantifier * on the wrong thing.
Thus, "match -, then any number of alphanumeric characters" would be -([[:alnum:]]*), except... Python does not support POSIX character classes. So you have to write your own: -([A-Za-z0-9]*).
However, that will not match your string because the intervening space is, as you note, not an alphanumeric character. In order to account for that, -\s*([A-Za-z0-9]*).

Not quite sure what you want to match. I'll assume you don't want to include '-' in any matches.
If you want to get all alphanumeric chars after the first '-' and skip all other characters you can do something like this.
re.match('.*?(?<=-)(((?<=\s+)?[a-zA-Z\d]+(?=\s+)?)+)', inputString)
If you want to find each string of alphanumerics after a each '-' then you can do this.
re.findall('(?<=-)[a-zA-Z\d]+')

Match charactes and whitespaces, but not numbers

I am trying to create a regex that will match characters, whitespaces, but not numbers.
So hello 123 will not match, but hell o will.
I tried this:
[^\d\w]
but, I cannot find a way to add whitespaces here. I have to use \w, because my strings can contain Unicode characters.

Brief
It's unclear what exactly characters refers to, but, assuming you mean alpha characters (based on your input), this regex should work for you.
Code
See regex in use here
^(?:(?!\d)[\w ])+$
Note: This regex uses the mu flags for multiline and Unicode (multiline only necessary if input is separated by newline characters)
Results
Input
ÀÇÆ some words
ÀÇÆ some words 123
Output
This only shows matches
ÀÇÆ some words
Explanation
^ Assert position at the start of the line
(?:(?!\d)[\w ])+ Match the following one or more times (tempered greedy token)
(?!\d) Negative lookahead ensuring what follows doesn't match a digit. You can change this to (?![\d_]) if you want to ensure _ is also not used.
[\w ] Match any word character or space (matches Unicode word characters with u flag)`
$ Assert position at the end of the line

You can use a lookahead:
(?=^\D+$)[\w\s]+
In Python:
import re
strings = ['hello 123', 'hell o']
rx = re.compile(r'(?=^\D+$)[\w\s]+')
new_strings = [string for string in strings if rx.match(string)]
print(new_strings)
# ['hell o']

Regular Expressions using Substitution to convert numbers

I'm a Python beginner, so keep in mind my regex skills are level -122.
I need to convert a string with text containing file1 to file01, but not convert file10 to file010.
My program is wrong, but this is the closest I can get, I've tried dozens of combinations but I can't get close:
import re
txt = 'file8, file9, file10'
pat = r"[0-9]"
regexp = re.compile(pat)
print(regexp.sub(r"0\d", txt))
Can someone tell me what's wrong with my pattern and substitution and give me some suggestions?

You could capture the number and check the length before adding 0, but you might be able to use this instead:
import re
txt = 'file8, file9, file10'
pat = r"(?<!\d)(\d)(?=,|$)"
regexp = re.compile(pat)
print(regexp.sub(r"0\1", txt))
regex101 demo
(?<! ... ) is called a negative lookbehind. This prevents (negative) a match if the pattern after it has the pattern in the negative lookbehind matches. For example, (?<!a)b will match all b in a string, except if it has an a before it, meaning bb, cb matches, but ab doesn't match. (?<!\d)(\d) thus matches a digit, unless it has another digit before it.
(\d) is a single digit, enclosed in a capture group, denoted by simple parentheses. The captured group gets stored in the first capture group.
(?= ... ) is a positive lookahead. This matches only if the pattern inside the positive lookahead matches after the pattern before this positive lookahead. In other words, a(?=b) will match all a in a string only if there's a b after it. ab matches, but ac or aa don't.
(?=,|$) is a positive lookahead containing ,|$ meaning either a comma, or the end of the string.
(?<!\d)(\d)(?=,|$) thus matches any digit, as long as there's no digit before it and there's a comma after it, or if that digit is at the end of the string.

how about?
a='file1'
a='file' + "%02d" % int(a.split('file')[1])

This approach uses a regex to find every sequence of digits and str.zfill to pad with zeros:
>>> txt = 'file8, file9, file10'
>>> re.sub(r'\d+', lambda m : m.group().zfill(2), txt)
'file08, file09, file10'

Exclude matched string python re.findall

I am using python's re.findall method to find occurrence of certain string value in Input string.
e.g. From search in 'ABCdef' string, I have two search requirements.
Find string starting from Single Capital letter.
After 1 find string that contains all capital letter.
e.g. input string and expected output will be:
'USA' -- output: ['USA']
'BObama' -- output: ['B', 'Obama']
'Institute20CSE' -- output: ['Institute', '20', 'CSE']
So My expectation from
>>> matched_value_list = re.findall ( '[A-Z][a-z]+|[A-Z]+' , 'ABCdef' )
is to return ['AB', 'Cdef'].
But which does Not seems to be happening. What I get is ['ABC'] as return value, which matches later part of regex with full string.
So Is there any way we can ignore found matches. So that once 'Cdef' is matched with '[A-Z][a-z]+'. second part of regex (i.e. '[A-Z]+') only matches with remaining string 'AB'?

First you need to match AB, which is followed by an Uppercase alphabet and then a lowercase alphabet. or is at the end of the string. For that you can use look-ahead.
Then you need to match an Uppercase alphabet C, followed by multiple lowercase alphabets def.
So, you can use this pattern:
>>> s = "ABCdef"
>>> re.findall("([A-Z]+(?=[A-Z][a-z]|$)|[A-Z][a-z]+)", s)
['AB', 'Cdef']
>>> re.findall("([A-Z]+(?=[A-Z][a-z]|$)|[A-Z][a-z]+)", 'MumABXYZCdefXYZAbc')
['Mum', 'ABXYZ', 'Cdef', 'XYZ', 'Abc']
As pointed out in comment by #sotapme, you can also modify the above regex to: -
"([A-Z]+(?=[A-Z]|$)|[A-Z][a-z]+|\d+)"
Added \d+ since you also want to match digit as in one of your example. Also, he removed [a-z] part from the first part of look-ahead. That works because, + quantifier on the [A-Z] outside is greedy by default, so, it will automatically match maximum string, and will stop only before the last upper case alphabet.

You can use this regex
[A-Z][a-zA-Z]*?(?=[A-Z][a-z]|[^a-zA-Z]|$)

How to match one character word?

How do I match only words of character length one? Or do I have to check the length of the match after I performed the match operation? My filter looks like this:
sw = r'\w+,\s+([A-Za-z]){1}
So it should match
rs =re.match(sw,'Herb, A')
But shouldn't match
rs =re.match(sw,'Herb, Abc')

If you use \b\w\b you will only match one character of type word. So your expression would be
sw = r'\w+,\s+\w\b'
(since \w is preceded by at least one \s you don't need the first \b)
Verification:
>>> sw = r'\w+,\s+\w\b'
>>> print re.match(sw,'Herb, A')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7242058>
>>> print re.match(sw,'Herb, Abc')
None

You can use
(?<=\s|^)\p{L}(?=[\s,.!?]|$)
which will match a single letter that is preceded and followed either by a whitespace character or the end of the string. The lookahead is a little augmented by punctuation marks as well ... this all depends a bit on your input data. You could also do a lookahead on a non-letter, but that begs the question whether “a123” is really a one-letter word. Or “I'm”.