Python's regular expression help

[Tim Chase]

On 04/29/2010 01:00 PM, goldtech wrote:
> Trying to start out with simple things but apparently there's some
> basics I need help with. This works OK:
>>>> import re
>>>> p = re.compile('(ab*)(sss)')
>>>> m = p.match( 'absss' )
>
>>>> f=r'abss'
>>>> f
> 'abss'
>>>> m = p.match( f )
>>>> m.group(0)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "<pyshell#15>", line 1, in<module>
>      m.group(0)
> AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'group'

'absss' != 'abss'

Your regexp looks for 3 "s", your "f" contains only 2.  So the 
regexp object doesn't, well, match.  Try

   f = 'absss'

and it will work.  As an aside, using raw-strings for this text 
doesn't change anything, but if you want, you _can_ write it as

   f = r'absss'

if it will make you feel better :)

> How do I implement a regex on a multiline string?  I thought this
> might work but there's problem:
>
>>>> p = re.compile('(ab*)(sss)', re.S)
>>>> m = p.match( 'ab\nsss' )
>>>> m.group(0)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "<pyshell#26>", line 1, in<module>
>      m.group(0)
> AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'group'

Well, it depends on what you want to do -- regexps are fairly 
precise, so if you want to allow whitespace between the two, you 
can use

   r = re.compile(r'(ab*)\s*(sss)')

If you want to allow whitespace anywhere, it gets uglier, and 
your capture/group results will contain that whitespace:

   r'(a\s*b*)\s*(s\s*s\s*s)'

Alternatively, if you don't want to allow arbitrary whitespace 
but only newlines, you can use "\n*" instead of "\s*"

-tkc