I am quite new to the re module in python, but have been trying to write a regular expression to grab the version number of a file. In most cases this snippet seems to work:
test = "filename.ver3_576.exr"
print(re.search("(?!(v|ver|version|vers))\d+", test.lower()).group())
but if I change the test string a little, it does not give me the results I would expect:
test2 = "filename.ver_3_576.exr" # expects None, because of the underscore, gets 3
test3 = "filenameVe2_version201_1001.exr" # expects 201, gets2, "ve"(exactly) is not something I want to search for
I am obviously doing something wrong here, but a struggling to identify what that might be.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, cheers
re.search('(version|vers|ver|v)(\d+)', test.lower()).group(2)
To answer your comment, you didn't use a lookbehind expression. That's a negative lookahead expression. The expression you used is identical to '\d+' (not so easy to explain why).
It's not easy to use a positive lookbehind re in this case because it requires a fixed width pattern. The following re, for example, will throw an error: '(?<=(version|vers|ver|v))\d+', so I suggest you use the re that I posted bucause it's the most streight forward.
Related
I've recently decided to jump into the deep end of the Python pool and start converting some of my R code over to Python and I'm stuck on something that is very important to me. In my line of work, I spend a lot of time parsing text data, which, as we all know, is very unstructured. As a result, I've come to rely on the lookaround feature of regex and R's lookaround functionality is quite robust. For example, if I'm parsing a PDF that might introduce some spaces in between letters when I OCR the file, I'd get to the value I want with something like this:
oAcctNum <- str_extract(textBlock[indexVal], "(?<=ORIG\\s?:\\s?/\\s?)[A-Z0-9]+")
In Python, this isn't possible because the use of ? makes the lookbehind a variable-width expression as opposed to a fixed-width. This functionality is important enough to me that it deters me from wanting to use Python, but instead of giving up on the language I'd like to know the Pythonista way of addressing this issue. Would I have to preprocess the string before extracting the text? Something like this:
oAcctNum = re.sub(r"(?<=\b\w)\s(?=\w\b)", "")
oAcctNum = re.search(r"(?<=ORIG:/)([A-Z0-9])", textBlock[indexVal]).group(1)
Is there a more efficient way to do this? Because while this example was trivial, this issue comes up in very complex ways with the data I work with and I'd hate to have to do this kind of preprocessing for every line of text I analyze.
Lastly, I apologize if this is not the right place to ask this question; I wasn't sure where else to post it. Thanks in advance.
Notice that if you can use groups, you generally do not need lookbehinds. So how about
match = re.search(r"ORIG\s?:\s?/\s?([A-Z0-9]+)", string)
if match:
text = match.group(1)
In practice:
>>> string = 'ORIG : / AB123'
>>> match = re.search(r"ORIG\s?:\s?/\s?([A-Z0-9]+)", string)
>>> match
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 12), match='ORIG : / AB123'>
>>> match.group(1)
'AB123'
You need to use capture groups in this case you described:
"(?<=ORIG\\s?:\\s?/\\s?)[A-Z0-9]+"
will become
r"ORIG\s?:\s?/\s?([A-Z0-9]+)"
The value will be in .group(1). Note that raw strings are preferred.
Here is a sample code:
import re
p = re.compile(r'ORIG\s?:\s?/\s?([A-Z0-9]+)', re.IGNORECASE)
test_str = "ORIG:/texthere"
print re.search(p, test_str).group(1)
IDEONE demo
Unless you need overlapping matches, capturing groups usage instead of a look-behind is rather straightforward.
print re.findall(r"ORIG\s?:\s?/\s?([A-Z0-9]+)",test_str)
You can directly use findall which will return all the groups in the regex if present.
I'm attempting to parse phone numbers that can come through in different ways. For example:
(321) 123-4567
(321) 1234567
321-123-4567
321123-4567
I then want to graph each of the three parts separately. My thought is to use named groups and some and or situation like so:
(^\s*(?P<area>[0-9]{3})\-?(?P<fst>[0-9]{3})\-(?P<lst>[0-9]{4}))|(^\s*\(\area\)\s*(\fst)\-?(\lst))
Problem with that, I believe, is that I am not calling the named groups properly. I'm trying to use https://regex101.com/ to help but am still getting stuck. Because the parentheses around the area code should either both be there or neither should be there I don't want to use the "?" character like:
\(?(?P<area>[0-9]{3})\)?
Can anyone Help me with this? Thank you so much.
I'm using python 3.6 and the re package.
There were a few issues with your regex. You didn't make the brackets optional, and you didn't allow optional spaces between area code and first part. Without seeing your Python code it's not easy to know how you were doing things, but I did this by splitting into a compiled regex, and then using the regex against the list of numbers.
from __future__ import print_function
import re
phone_numbers = [
'(321) 123-4567',
'(321) 1234567',
'321-123-4567',
'321123-4567',
]
regex = re.compile(r'^\s*\(?(?P<area>[0-9]{3})[) -]*(?P<fst>[0-9]{3})-?(?P<sec>[0-9]{4})')
for p in phone_numbers:
print(regex.sub(r'(\g<area>) \g<fst>-\g<sec>', p))
This isn't perfect as it will allow things that aren't valid syntax (according to your list) to be parsed, but this shouldn't be a problem. For example '(321))- - )) 123-4567' would be parsed correctly.
I'd use group testing: ^(\()?(?P<area>\d{3})(?(1)\))[ -]?(?P<fst>\d{3})-?(?P<lst>\d{4})$.
In there:
(\()? captures an opening parenthese in group 1 when exists.
(?(1)\)) tests for existence of a captured group 1, if so matches a closing parenthese.
The rest is pretty straightforward.
I am looking for a regular expression that discriminates between a string that contains a numerical value enclosed between parentheses, and a string that contains outside of them. The problem is, parentheses may be embedded into each other:
So, for example the expression should match the following strings:
hey(example1)
also(this(onetoo2(hard)))
but(here(is(a(harder)one)maybe23)Hehe)
But it should not match any of the following:
this(one)is22misleading
how(to(go)on)with(multiple)3parent(heses(around))
So far I've tried
\d[A-Za-z] \)
and easy things like this one. The problem with this one is it does not match the example 2, because it has a ( string after it.
How could I solve this one?
The problem is not one of pattern matching. That means regular expressions are not the right tool for this.
Instead, you need lexical analysis and parsing. There are many libraries available for that job.
You might try the parsing or pyparsing libraries.
These type of regexes are not always easy, but sometimes it's possible to come up with a way provided the input remains somewhat consistent. A pattern generally like this should work:
(.*(\([\d]+[^(].*\)|\(.*[^)][\d]+.*\)).*)
Code:
import re
p = re.compile(ur'(.*(\([\d]+[^(].*\)|\(.*[^)][\d]+.*\)).*)', re.MULTILINE)
result = re.findall(p, searchtext)
print(result)
Result:
https://regex101.com/r/aL8bB8/1
I hope this message finds you in good spirits. I am trying to find a quick tutorial on the \b expression (apologies if there is a better term). I am writing a script at the moment to parse some xml files, but have ran into a bit of a speed bump. I will show an example of my xml:
<....></...><...></...><OrderId>123456</OrderId><...></...>
<CustomerId>44444444</CustomerId><...></...><...></...>
<...> is unimportant and non relevant xml code. Focus primarily on the CustomerID and OrderId.
My issue lies in parsing a string, similar to the above statement. I have a regexParse definition that works perfectly. However it is not intuitive. I need to match only the part of the string that contains 44444444.
My Current setup is:
searchPattern = '>\d{8}</CustomerId'
Great! It works, but I want to do it the right way. My thinking is 1) find 8 digits 2) if the some word boundary is non numeric after that matches CustomerId return it.
Idea:
searchPattern = '\bd{16}\b'
My issue in my tests is incorporating the search for CustomerId somewhere before and after the digits. I was wondering if any of you can either help me out with my issue, or point me in the right path (in words of a guide or something along the lines). Any help is appreciated.
Mods if this is in the wrong area apologies, I wanted to post this in the Python discussion because I am not sure if Python regex supports this functionality.
Thanks again all,
darcmasta
txt = """
<....></...><...></...><OrderId>123456</OrderId><...></...>
<CustomerId>44444444</CustomerId><...></...><...></...>
"""
import re
pattern = "<(\w+)>(\d+)<"
print re.findall(pattern,txt)
#output [('OrderId', '123456'), ('CustomerId', '44444444')]
You might consider using a look-back operator in your regex to make it easy for a human to read:
import re
a = re.compile("(?<=OrderId>)\\d{6}")
a.findall("<....></...><...></...><OrderId>123456</OrderId><...></...><CustomerId>44444444</CustomerId><...></...><...></...>")
['123456']
b = re.compile("(?<=CustomerId>)\\d{8}")
b.findall("<....></...><...></...><OrderId>123456</OrderId><...></...><CustomerId>44444444</CustomerId><...></...><...></...>")
['44444444']
You should be using raw string literals:
searchPattern = r'\b\d{16}\b'
The escape sequence \b in a plain (non-raw) string literal represents the backspace character, so that's what the re module would be receiving (unrecognised escape sequences such as \d get passed on as-is, i.e. backslash followed by 'd').
I'm trying to write a regular expression that will convert a full path filename to a short filename for a given filetype, minus the file extension.
For example, I'm trying to get just the name of the .bar file from a string using
re.search('/(.*?)\.bar$', '/def_params/param_1M56/param/foo.bar')
According to the Python re docs, *? is the ungreedy version of *, so I was expecting to get
'foo'
returned for match.group(1) but instead I got
'def_params/param_1M56/param/foo'
What am I missing here about greediness?
What you're missing isn't so much about greediness as about regular expression engines: they work from left to right, so the / matches as early as possible and the .*? is then forced to work from there. In this case, the best regex doesn't involve greediness at all (you need backtracking for that to work; it will, but could take a really long time to run if there are a lot of slashes), but a more explicit pattern:
'/([^/]*)\.bar$'
I would suggest changing your regex so that it doesn't rely on greedyness.
You want only the filename before the extension .bar and everything after the final /. This should do:
re.search(`/[^/]*\.bar$`, '/def_params/param_1M56/param/foo.bar')
What this does is it matches /, then zero or more characters (as much as possible) that are not / and then .bar.
I don't claim to understand the non-greedy operators all that well, but a solution for that particular problem would be to use ([^/]*?)
The regular expressions starts from the right. Put a .* at the start and it should work.
I like regex but there is no need of one here.
path = '/def_params/param_1M56/param/foo.bar'
print path.rsplit('/',1)[1].rsplit('.')[0]
path = '/def_params/param_1M56/param/fululu'
print path.rsplit('/',1)[1].rsplit('.')[0]
path = '/def_params/param_1M56/param/one.before.two.dat'
print path.rsplit('/',1)[1].rsplit('.',1)[0]
result
foo
fululu
one.before.two
Other people have answered the regex question, but in this case there's a more efficient way than regex:
file_name = path[path.rindex('/')+1 : path.rindex('.')]
try this one on for size:
match = re.search('.*/(.*?).bar$', '/def_params/param_1M56/param/foo.bar')