Combine many similar regex in one in Python

Question

I am not familiar with Regex. Actually, I've just started with it. I have three different patterns

pattern = re.compile(r'SETUP...\d+')
pattern = re.compile(r'PRO...\d+')
pattern = re.compile(r'INSTALL...\d+')

Some of my strings are SETUP1234, SETUP = 1234, SETUP 1234, SETUP-1234 etc. The same with the others. So, I decide that 3 characters between the prefix and the numbers is a reasonable way to use it. But my problem now is, can I combine the three of them in one Regex instead of calling three different findall?

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:20:53Z

4

You can use | like this

pattern = re.compile(r'(SETUP|PRO|INSTALL)...\d+')

it means that any of SETUP, PRO or INSTALL.

Also, the pattern can be improved a little, like this

pattern = re.compile(r'(SETUP|PRO|INSTALL).{1,3}\d+')

This allows 1 to 3 characters to be used in between the words and the numbers.

As Tim suggested in the comments, you can use non-capturing group like this

pattern = re.compile(r'(?:SETUP|PRO|INSTALL).{1,3}\d+')
print pattern.findall("SETUP 1234")
# ['SETUP 1234']
print pattern.findall("PRO 1234")
# ['PRO 1234']
print pattern.findall("INSTALL 1234")
# ['INSTALL 1234']

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:20

CommunityBot

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answered Apr 4, 2014 at 7:11

thefourtheye

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3 Comments

Tim Brown Over a year ago

If you want the non-capturing version, you can make it (?:SETUP|PRO|INSTALL)...\d+

Sfinos Over a year ago

This return only the first part of the pattern (eg SETUP)

thefourtheye Over a year ago

@Sfinos Please check the updated answer, non-capturing version will give the entire string.

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