I want to find if string1 is substring of string2.
e.g. string1="abc", string2="afcabcdfg".
I want to add Wildcard cases, e.g. "*" can substitute "a" and "c", "y" can substitute "f" or "d". As a result, "*by" should be substring of "afcabcdfg".
What is general way to code it? How should I loop it?
For the example provided by you try using a dictionary to define all the replacements then loop over the characters of the string like this:
string2="afcabcdfg"
table = {'a': '*', 'c': '*', 'f': 'y', 'd': 'y'}
new_string = ''
for c in string2:
if c in table and table[c] not in new_string: new_string += table[c]
elif c not in table: new_string += c
Use re, and a little string manipulation to make yourself a regex.
import re
string1 = 'abc'
string2 = 'zbcdef'
wildcards = 'a'
# . is wildcard in a regex.
my_regex = string1.replace(wildcards, '.')
# If there is a match, re returns an object. We don't care
# about what info the object holds, just that it returns.
if re.match(my_regex, string2):
print "Success"
# If there's no match, None is returned.
if not re.match(my_regex, string3):
print "Also success"
