Python Regex Examples with Notes

In this blog post you will learn about regular expressions (RegEx), and use Python’s re module to work with RegEx (with the help of examples). A Regular Expression (RegEx) is a sequence of characters that defines a search pattern.

For loop to incorporate a regex search

import re
[w for w in text8 if re.search('@[A-Za-z0-9_]+', w)]

Regex example description for “@[A-Za-z0-9_]+”

• Finds anything beginning with ‘@’
• Followed by any alphabet, digit, or underscore
• Repeats at least once, but any number of times is accepted

Match something after ‘@’

@[A-Za-z0-9_]+

Regex Meta Characters

 . = wildcard, matches a single character but only once
 ^ = start of a string
 [] = matches one of the set of characters within []
 [a-z] = matches on the range of a...z
 [^abc] = matches a character that is not a,b, or c
 a|b = matches either a or b, where a and b are strings
 () = scoping characters
 \ = escape characters such as (\t, \n, \b)
\b = matches word boundary
\d = Any digit, equivalent to [0-9]
\D = Any non-digit, equivalent to [^0-9]
\s = Any whitespace, equivalent to [ \t\n\r\f\v]
\S = Any non-whitespace, equivalent to [^ \t\n\r\v]
\w = Alphanumeric character, equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_]
\W = Any non alphanumeric character, equivalent to [^ a-zA-Z0-9_]

Regex Repetitions

* = matches zero or more times
+ = matches one or more times
? = matches zero or once times
{n} = exactly n repetitions
{,n} = at most n repetitions
{m,n} = at least m and at most n repetitions

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