Extract some info from email using regular expression with Python

I don't think that you need regular expressions. You could probably do this by using readlines to load the file, then iterate over that looking for "Delivery estimate:" using the startswith() method in the string module. At that point, you have a line number where the data is located.

You can get the address by scanning backwards from the line number to find the block of text delimited by blank lines. Don't forget to use strip() when looking for blank lines.

Then do a forward scan from the delivery estimate line to pick up the other info. Much faster than regular expressions too.

Do data = file.read() which will give you the whole shabang and then make sure to add line ends and start to your regex where needed.

You could split on the double \n\n and work from there:

>>> s= """
... Engineer1 
... 31500 N. Mopac Circle.
... Company, Building A, 3K.A01
... Dallas, TX 78759
... United States
... 
... Delivery estimate: February 3, 2011
... 
... 1 "Writing Compilers and Interpreters"
... Ronald Mak; Paperback; $21.80
... 
... Sold by: Textbooksrus LLC
... """
>>> name, estimate, author_price, seller = s.split("\n\n")
>>> print name
Engineer1 
31500 N. Mopac Circle.
Company, Building A, 3K.A01
Dallas, TX 78759
United States