Python error because of regex inside a Google Big Query

Question

I am writing Google Big Query wrappers in python. One of the queries has a regex and the python code is treating it as an syntax error.

Here is the regex WHEN tier2 CONTAINS '-' THEN REGEXP_EXTRACT(tier2,'(.*)\s-')

the error is Invalid string literal: '(.*)\s-'> The error is for \ in the regex. Any suggestion to overcome it

Mikhail Berlyant · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-10 00:24:59Z

2

You need to escape backslash by preceding it with yet another backslash
Backslash \ is an escape character so you need to escape it so it is treated as a normal character

Try

'(.*)\\s-'

Based on your comments, looks like above is exactly what you are using in BigQuery - so in this case you need to escape each of two backslashes

'(.*)\\\\s-'

edited Dec 10, 2016 at 0:24

answered Dec 10, 2016 at 0:12

Mikhail Berlyant

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4 Comments

SAM244776 Over a year ago

you are right...the code works in big query with \\ but in python somehow its throwing error.

SAM244776 Over a year ago

This is what i am using in the query .....WHEN tier2 CONTAINS '-' THEN REGEXP_EXTRACT(tier2,'(.*)\\s-')

Mikhail Berlyant Over a year ago

so you need escape it twice in this case - try '(.*)\\\\s-'

SAM244776 Over a year ago

You are amazing...Mr Berlyant you are brilliant :)

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