[Chicago] regular expression headache

[JS Irick]

Robert-
You need to use raw strings for regular expressions, otherwise your regexp
special characters will not be properly interpreted.  (experts, please
correct any terms I have wrong here)
Replace this lineregex = re.compile("^(?:Post (?:Office )?|P[. ]?O\.?
)?Box\b") withregex = re.compile(r'^(?:Post (?:Office )?|P[. ]?O\.?
)?Box\b')

Or you could escape your slashes:regex = re.compile("^(?:Post (?:Office
)?|P[. ]?O\.? )?Box\\b")

Thank you.  -js


On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 8:42 PM, Steve Schwarz <steve at agilitynerd.com>wrote:

> For me, when it comes to writing regexps I always write a ton of test
> strings ordered easy to hard and start from very short simple regexps until
> they all pass.
>
> On Saturday, January 11, 2014, Robert Spelich wrote:
>
>> Steve,
>> Thank you so much! I can't tell you how much time I spent trying to get
>> this to run.
>> -Bob S.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 6:21 PM, Steve Schwarz <steve at agilitynerd.com>wrote:
>>
>> I tested it in python 2.5, 2.7.6 and 3.3 and it fails in all of them.
>> Seems to be the "\b", when I remove it it matches.
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Robert Spelich <rlspelich at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>> import re
>> address = 'PO Box 34'
>> regex = re.compile("^(?:Post (?:Office )?|P[. ]?O\.? )?Box\b")
>> mo = regex.search(address)
>> mo
>>
>> This should return a match object. It returns one when I test it at
>> http://www.pythonregex.com.
>>
>> Thanks again.-Bob
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 5:18 PM, Steve Schwarz <steve at agilitynerd.com>wrote:
>>
>> Bob,
>> Can you post your code/tests? Then we can try it out too and help debug
>> what is going on.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Steve
>> Blogs: http://agilitynerd.com/  http://tech.agilitynerd.com/
>> Dog Agility Search: http://googility.com/
>> Dog Agility Courses: http://agilitycourses.com/
>> http://www.facebook.com/AgilityNerd
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Robert Spelich <rlspelich at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>  Can anyone offer me a suggestion as to why a regular expression that
>> validates on a testing tool would not match on the same string when run in
>> a script or directly in the interpreter? I used 2 different online tools,
>> one a general expression tool and one Python specific. They both matched,
>> when run locally it does not match.
>>
>> I am using an re from a cookbook to match addresses in a database that
>> start with a PO Box address. I am using 2.7. I am stumped.
>>
>> po_box = re.compile('^(?:Post (?:Office )?|P[. ]?O\.? )?Box\b')
>>
>> Thanks in advance if anyone can help me out.
>>
>> -Bob S.
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
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>>
>> --
>> Best Regards,
>> Steve
>> Blogs: http://agilitynerd.com/  http://tech.agilitynerd.com/
>> Dog Agility Search: <http://googility.com/>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Sent from my phone, sorry if it is brief.
>
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====
JS Irick
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