Regex matching 3rd word in a line?

[Harvey Thomas]

Klaus-G. Meyer
> Ian Gil wrote:
> > and I'm looking to match just the third word.
> 
> Hm, first extract the third word and then use re?
> 
>  >>> s = "one two three four"
>  >>> s.split()[2]
> 'three'
> 
> split has an optional argument "sep" to define other chars than 
> whitespace characters.
> 
> -- 
> Gruß - regards
> Klaus :-)

Agreed, using the split method of string is best for the problem as originally posed, but if you change the definition of a word to be one or more alphanumeric characters, the best method is surely to use something like

>>> a = 'qqq www eee rrr'
>>> r = re.compile('^(?:\w+\W+){2}(\w+)')
>>> q = r.match(a)
>>> q.group(1)
'eee'

_____________________________________________________________________
This message has been checked for all known viruses by the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service.