Python regular expression search

Question

I was trying to search for all those phrases with the key word 'car':

e.g. text = 'alice: speed car, my red car, new car', I would like to find 'speed car', 'my red car', 'new car'.

import re
text = 'alice: speed car, my red car, new car'
regex = r'([a-zA-Z]+\s)+car'
match = re.findall(regex, text)
if match:
    print(match)

but the above code yields:

["speed ", "red ", "new "]

instead of

["speed car", "my red car", "new car"]

which is expected?

Ashwini Chaudhary · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-14 07:16:06Z

4

Problem is you're not capturing 'car' in your regex, put the whole regex inside a () and and use ?: for the inner regex to make it a non-capturing group.

>>> regex = r'((?:[a-zA-Z]+\s)+car)'
>>> text = 'alice: speed car, my red car, new car'
>>> re.findall(regex, text)
['speed car', 'my red car', 'new car']

edited Aug 14, 2013 at 7:16

answered Aug 14, 2013 at 7:08

Ashwini Chaudhary

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