Extract IP address from file using Python
Last Updated :
10 Feb, 2022
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Let us see how to extract IP addresses from a file using Python.
Algorithm :
- Import the re module for regular expression.
- Open the file using the open() function.
- Read all the lines in the file and store them in a list.
- Declare the pattern for IP addresses. The regex pattern is :
r'(\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})'
- For every element of the list search for the pattern using the search() function, store the IP addresses in a list.
- Display the list containing the IP addresses.
The file to be processed is test.txt :

# importing the module
import re
# opening and reading the file
with open('C:/Users/user/Desktop/New Text Document.txt') as fh:
fstring = fh.readlines()
# declaring the regex pattern for IP addresses
pattern = re.compile(r'(\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})')
# initializing the list object
lst=[]
# extracting the IP addresses
for line in fstring:
lst.append(pattern.search(line)[0])
# displaying the extracted IP addresses
print(lst)
Output :

The above Python program displays any kind of IP addresses present in the file. We can also display the valid IP addresses.
Rules for a valid IP Address :
- The numbers should be in a range of 0-255
- It should consist of 4 cells separated by '.'
The regular expression for valid IP addresses is :
((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)
Explanation of Regular Expression used for valid IP:
Since we cannot use 0-255 range in regular expression we divide the same in 3 groups:
- 25[0-5] - represents numbers from 250 to 255
- 2[0-4][0-9] - represents numbers from 200 to 249
- [01]?[0-9][0-9]?- represents numbers from 0 to 199
The file to be processed is test2.txt :

# importing the module
import re
# opening and reading the file
with open('test2.txt') as fh:
string = fh.readlines()
# declaring the regex pattern for IP addresses
pattern =re.compile('''((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.)
{3}(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)''')
# initializing the list objects
valid =[]
invalid=[]
# extracting the IP addresses
for line in string:
line = line.rstrip()
result = pattern.search(line)
# valid IP addresses
if result:
valid.append(line)
# invalid IP addresses
else:
invalid.append(line)
# displaying the IP addresses
print("Valid IPs")
print(valid)
print("Invalid IPs")
print(invalid)
Output :
