Complementary of a regular expression in python

Question

I am trying to get all the string that does not match these two regular expressions:

\d{2}[-]\d{2}[-]\d{4}

\d{2}[:]\d{2}

I have tried using:

/^((?!REGULAR_EXPRESSION_HERE).)*$/

But does not work.

Anyone know how it should be done? I can't use the re.split() function of python because I am using the regular expressions tool of Scrapy.

@utdemir Oh, you can forget about them, it's the same if you remove them. I think that they are use when you want to work with a range [1-9]. — AritzBi
– AritzBi, Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 13:30
Python's regular expressions are not enclosed in slashes. Are you sure you're talking about Python? — lanzz
– lanzz, Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 13:32
@lanzz The two regulars expressions that I have put above are working properly in python. The other stuff, /^((?!REGULAR_EXPRESSION_HERE).)*$/, it's just something that I have found to calculate the opposite and it isn't working. — AritzBi
– AritzBi, Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 13:38

Stephan · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-11 18:19:03Z

1

Try this regex:

(?P<date>\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4})|(?P<time>\d{2}:\d{2})

Sample code

#!/usr/local/bin/python

import re

text=("01-01-2014 13:15\n"
"foo bar\n"
"\n"
"Some text: blah bla !\n"
"Some ranges:\n"
"1-\n"
"-1\n"
"12-\n"
"-12\n"
"1-2\n"
"12-3\n"
"Strange date: 08-99-1999\n")

pattern = re.compile(r"(?P<date>\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4})|(?P<time>\d{2}:\d{2})")

result = pattern.sub("", text)

print( result )

Output

\n 
foo bar\n
\n
Some text: blah bla !\n
Some ranges:\n
1-\n
-1\n
12-\n
-12\n
1-2\n
12-3\n
Strange date: \n

NOTA: I have added the \n otherwise they are not visible in the answer.

Tested on Python 2.7.4 and Python 3.2.3

edited Feb 11, 2014 at 18:19

answered Feb 11, 2014 at 16:30

Stephan

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2 Comments

AritzBi Over a year ago

Thank you very much, I can't give you the vote up because I don't have the enough reputation yet... :(

Stephan Over a year ago

@AritzBi I think you can now , dont'you ;)

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