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Regular Expression

Regular expressions (RegEx) allow complex pattern matching in strings. The re module in Python provides regular expression functionality. RegEx can be used to validate forms, extract parts of strings, and find/replace substrings. Common RegEx functions include search(), findall(), split(), and sub(). These functions return Match objects containing details of matches like character positions.

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55 views22 pages

Regular Expression

Regular expressions (RegEx) allow complex pattern matching in strings. The re module in Python provides regular expression functionality. RegEx can be used to validate forms, extract parts of strings, and find/replace substrings. Common RegEx functions include search(), findall(), split(), and sub(). These functions return Match objects containing details of matches like character positions.

Uploaded by

Deependra
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Regular Expression

RegEx
• A sequence of characters that forms a search
pattern.
• RegEx can be used to check if a string contains the
specified search pattern.
• Python has a built-in package called re,
which can be used to work with Regular
Expressions.
• Import the re module:
• import re
• Regex is provided by many programming languages,
such as python, java,  javascript, etc.

• Applications:
• email validation, password validation, phone number
validation, and many other fields of the form.
Example
import re

#Check if the string starts with "The" and ends with "Spain":

txt = "The rain in Spain"


x = re.search("^The.*Spain$", txt)

if x:
print("YES! We have a match!")
else:
print("No match")

Output: YES! We have a match!


RegEx Functions
Metacharacters
Special Sequences
Sets
The findall() Function

import re

#Return a list containing every occurrence of "ai":

txt = "The rain in Spain"


x = re.findall("ai", txt)
print(x)

Output:
['ai', 'ai']
Example: Return an empty list if no match was found

import re
txt = "The rain in Spain"
#Check if "Portugal" is in the string:
x = re.findall("Portugal", txt)
print(x)
if (x):
print("Yes, there is at least one match!")
else:
print("No match")
Output:
[]
No match
Use of findall()
• #Check if "INDIA" is in the string: match is case-sensitive
• import re
• txt = "The rain in Spain, INDIA"

• x = re.findall("INDIA", txt)
• print(x)
The search() Function:
The search() function searches the string for a match, and returns a Match object if there is a
match.
If there is more than one match, only the first occurrence of the match will be returned:

import re

txt = "The rain in Spain"


x = re.search("\s", txt)

print("The first white-space character is located in position:", x.start())

Output: The first white-space character is located in position: 3: 3


The split() Function

The split() function returns a list where the string has been split at each
match:
import re
#Split the string at every white-space character:
txt = "The rain in Spain"
x = re.split("\s", txt)
print(x)
Output: ['The', 'rain', 'in', 'Spain']
Example: Split the string only at the first occurrence
import re

#Split the string at the first white-space character:

txt = "The rain in Spain“


x = re.split("\s", txt, 1)
print(x)

Output: ['The', 'rain in Spain']


The sub() Function

The sub() function replaces the matches with the text of your choice:
import re

#Replace all white-space characters with the digit "9":


txt = "The rain in Spain"
x = re.sub("\s", "9", txt)
print(x)
Output: The9rain9in9Spain
Example: Replace the first 2 occurrences:
import re

#Replace the first two occurrences of a white-space character with the


digit 9:

txt = "The rain in Spain“


x = re.sub("\s", "9", txt, 2)
print(x)

Output: The9rain9in Spain


Match Object

• A Match Object is an object containing information about the search and the result.
• If there is no match, the value None will be returned, instead of the Match Object.

import re
#The search() function returns a Match object:
txt = "The rain in Spain"
x = re.search("ai", txt)
print(x)
Output:
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(5, 7), match='ai'>
• The Match object has properties and methods used to retrieve
information about the search, and the result:

• .span() returns a tuple containing the start-, and end positions of the
match.
• .string returns the string passed into the function
• .group() returns the part of the string where there was a match
Example: Print the position (start- and end-
position) of the first match occurrence.
import re
#Search for an upper case "S" character in the beginning of a word, and
print its position:
txt = "The rain in Spain"
x = re.search(r"\bS\w+", txt)
print(x.span())
Output:
(12, 17)
Example: Print the string passed into the function:

import re

#The string property returns the search string:

txt = "The rain in Spain"


x = re.search(r"\bS\w+", txt)
print(x.string)

Output: The rain in Spain


Example: Print the part of the string where there was a match.

import re

#Search for an upper case "S" character in the beginning of a word, and
print the word:

txt = "The rain in Spain"


x = re.search(r"\bS\w+", txt)
print(x.group())

Output: Spain
Thank you

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