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Python Regex to Remove Special Characters from Middle of String and Disregard Anything Else

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/

Regex only finds results once

I'm trying to find any text between a '>' character and a new line, so I came up with this regex:
result = re.search(">(.*)\n", text).group(1)
It works perfectly with only one result, such as:
>test1
(something else here)
Where the result, as intended, is
test1
But whenever there's more than one result, it only shows the first one, like in:
>test1
(something else here)
>test2
(something else here)
Which should give something like
test1\ntest2
But instead just shows
test1
What am I missing? Thank you very much in advance.

re.search only returns the first match, as documented:
Scan through string looking for the first location where the regular
expression pattern produces a match, and return a corresponding
MatchObject instance.
To find all the matches, use findall.
Return all non-overlapping matches of pattern in string, as a list of
strings. The string is scanned left-to-right, and matches are returned
in the order found.
Here's an example from the shell:
>>> import re
>>> re.findall(">(.*)\n", ">test1\nxxx>test2\nxxx")
['test1', 'test2']
Edit: I just read your question again and realised that you want "test1\ntest2" as output. Well, just join the list with \n:
>>> "\n".join(re.findall(">(.*)\n", ">test1\nxxx>test2\nxxx"))
'test1\ntest2'

You could try:
y = re.findall(r'((?:(?:.+?)(?:(?=[\n\r][^\n\r])\n|))+)', text)
Which returns ['t1\nt2\nt3'] for 't1\nt2\nt3\n'. If you simply want the string, you can get it by:
s = y[0]
Although it seems much larger than your initial code, it will give you your desired string.
Explanation -
((?:(?:.+?)(?:(?=[\n\r][^\n\r])\n|))+) is the regex as well as the match.
(?:(?:.+?)(?:(?=[\n\r][^\n\r])\n|)) is the non-capturing group that matches any text followed by a newline, and is repeatedly found one-or-more times by the + after it.
(?:.+?) matches the actual words which are then followed by a newline.
(?:(?=[\n\r][^\n\r])\n|) is a non-capturing conditional group which tells the regex that if the matched text is followed by a newline, then it should match it, provided that the newline is not followed by another newline or carriage return
(?=[\n\r][^\n\r]) is a positive look-ahead which ascertains that the text found is followed by a newline or carriage return, and then some non-newline characters, which combined with the \n| after it, tells the regex to match a newline.
Granted, after typing this big mess out, the regex is pretty long and complicated, so you would be better off implementing the answers you understand, rather than this answer, which you may not. However, this seems to be the only one-line answer to get the exact output you desire.

Python regex numbers and underscores

I'm trying to get a list of files from a directory whose file names follow this pattern:
PREFIX_YYYY_MM_DD.dat
For example
FOO_2016_03_23.dat
Can't seem to get the right regex. I've tried the following:
pattern = re.compile(r'(\d{4})_(\d{2})_(\d{2}).dat')
>>> []
pattern = re.compile(r'*(\d{4})_(\d{2})_(\d{2}).dat')
>>> sre_constants.error: nothing to repeat
Regex is certainly a weakpoint for me. Can anyone explain where I'm going wrong?
To get the files, I'm doing:
files = [f for f in os.listdir(directory) if pattern.match(f)]
PS, how would I allow for .dat and .DAT (case insensitive file extension)?
Thanks

You have two issues with your expression:
re.compile(r'(\d{4})_(\d{2})_(\d{2}).dat')
The first one, as a previous comment stated, is that the . right before dat should be escaped by putting a backslash (\) before. Otherwise, python will treat it as a special character, because in regex . represents "any character".
Besides that, you're not handling uppercase exceptions on your expression. You should make a group for this with dat and DAT as possible choices.
With both changes made, it should look like:
re.compile(r'(\d{4})_(\d{2})_(\d{2})\.(?:dat|DAT)')
As an extra note, I added ?: at the beginning of the group so the regex matcher ignores it at the results.

Use pattern.search() instead of pattern.match().
pattern.match() always matches from the start of the string (which includes the PREFIX).
pattern.search() searches anywhere within the string.

Does this do what you want?
>>> import re
>>> pattern = r'\A[a-z]+_\d{4}_\d{2}_\d{2}\.dat\Z'
>>> string = 'FOO_2016_03_23.dat'
>>> re.search(pattern, string, re.IGNORECASE)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 18), match='FOO_2016_03_23.dat'>
>>>
It appears to match the format of the string you gave as an example.

The following should match for what you requested.
[^_]+[_]\d{4}[_]\d{2}[_]\d{2}[\.]\w+
I recommend using https://regex101.com/ (for python regular expressions) or http://regexr.com/ (for javascript regular expressions) in the future if you want to validate your regular expressions.

Regex: Complement a group of characters (Python)

I want to write a regex to check if a word ends in anything except s,x,y,z,ch,sh or a vowel, followed by an s. Here's my failed attempt:
re.match(r".*[^ s|x|y|z|ch|sh|a|e|i|o|u]s",s)
What is the correct way to complement a group of characters?

Non-regex solution using str.endswith:
>>> from itertools import product
>>> tup = tuple(''.join(x) for x in product(('s','x','y','z','ch','sh'), 's'))
>>> 'foochf'.endswith(tup)
False
>>> 'foochs'.endswith(tup)
True

[^ s|x|y|z|ch|sh|a|e|i|o|u]
This is an inverted character class. Character classes match single characters, so in your case, it will match any character, except one of these: acehiosuxyz |. Note that it will not respect compound groups like ch and sh and the | are actually interpreted as pipe characters which just appear multiple time in the character class (where duplicates are just ignored).
So this is actually equivalent to the following character class:
[^acehiosuxyz |]
Instead, you will have to use a negative look behind to make sure that a trailing s is not preceded by any of the character sequences:
.*(?<!.[ sxyzaeiou]|ch|sh)s
This one has the problem that it will not be able to match two character words, as, to be able to use look behinds, the look behind needs to have a fixed size. And to include both the single characters and the two-character groups in the look behind, I had to add another character to the single character matches. You can however use two separate look behinds instead:
.*(?<![ sxyzaeiou])(?<!ch|sh)s
As LarsH mentioned in the comments, if you really want to match words that end with this, you should add some kind of boundary at the end of the expression. If you want to match the end of the string/line, you should add a $, and otherwise you should at least add a word boundary \b to make sure that the word actually ends there.

It looks like you need a negative lookbehind here:
import re
rx = r'(?<![sxyzaeiou])(?<!ch|sh)s$'
print re.search(rx, 'bots') # ok
print re.search(rx, 'boxs') # None
Note that re doesn't support variable-width LBs, therefore you need two of them.

How about
re.search("([^sxyzaeiouh]|[^cs]h)s$", s)
Using search() instead of match() means the match doesn't have to begin at the beginning of the string, so we can eliminate the .*.
This is assuming that the end of the word is the end of the string; i.e. we don't have to check for a word boundary.
It also assumes that you don't need to match the "word" hs, even it conforms literally to your rules. If you want to match that as well, you could add another alternative:
re.search("([^sxyzaeiouh]|[^cs]|^h)s$", s)
But again, we're assuming that the beginning of the word is the beginning of the string.
Note that the raw string notation, r"...", is unecessary here (but harmless). It only helps when you have backslashes in the regexp, so that you don't have to escape them in the string notation.

Python regex - (\w+) results different output when used with complex expression

I have doubt on python regex operation. Here you go my sample test.
>>>re.match(r'(\w+)','a-b') gives an output
>>> <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x7f51c0033210>
>>>re.match(r'(\w+):(\d+)','a-b:1')
>>>
Why does the 2nd regex condition doesn't give match object though the 1st regex gives match object for a normal string match condition, irrespective of special characters is available in the string?
However, \w+ will matches for [a-z,A-Z,_]. I'm not clear why (\w+) gives matched object for the string 'a-b'. How can I check whether the given string doesn't contain any special characters?

Taking a look at the actual match will give you an idea of what happens.
>>> re.match(r'(\w+)', 'a-b')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x0000000002DE45D0>
>>> _.groups()
('a',)
As you can see, the expression matched a. The character sequence \w only contains actual word characters, but not separators like dashes. So you can’t actually match a-b using just a \w+.
Now in the second expression one might think that it would match b:1 at least, given that \w+ matches b and :(\d+) does match the 1. However it does not happen due to how re.match works. As the documentation hints, it only tries to match “at the beginning of string”. So when using re.match there is an implicit ^ at the beginning of the expression that makes it only match from the start. So it actually tries to find a match starting with a.
Instead, you can use re.search which actually looks in the whole string if it can match the expression anywhere. So there, you will get a result:
>>> re.search(r'(\w+):(\d+)', 'a-b:1')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x0000000002E01B58>
>>> _.groups()
('b', '1')
For further information on the search vs. match topic, check this section in the manual.
And finally, if you want to match dashes too, you can use a character sequence [\w-] for example:
>>> re.match(r'([\w-]+):(\d+)', 'a-b:1')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x0000000002E01B58>
>>> _.groups()
('a-b', '1')

The first matches the a - one or more word chars.
The second is one or more word chars immediately followed by a : which there aren't...
[a-z,A-Z,_] (the equivalent of \w) means a to z and A to Z - it isn't the literal hyphen in this context, if you did want a hyphen, put it as the first or last character of a character class.

Match's docs say
If zero or more characters at the beginning of string match the
regular expression pattern, return a corresponding MatchObject
instance.
match method will return the matched object if it finds a match at the beginning of the string. (\w+) matches a in a-b.
print re.match(r'(\w+)','a-b').group()
will print
a
In the second case ((\w+):(\d+)), the actual string which gets matched is b:1, which is not at the beginning of the string. That's why its returning None.
How can I check whether the given string doesn't contain any special characters?
I would say, the second regular expression which you have used should be enough and match function should be enough. I insist on match, since there are differences between match and search http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/re.html#search-vs-match
Remember, you