Finding the rest of the string with newlines Python

Question

I have a string msg like this

msg = "abc 123 \n  456"

I want to do something like this

m = re.match('abc (.*)',msg)

and have m.groups return "123 \n 456"

but currently it only returns "123 "

How would i capture the rest of the string rather than just until the end of the line

hwnd · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-28 23:34:38Z

2

Use the s ( dotall ) modifier forcing the dot to match all characters, including line breaks.

>>> import re
>>> msg = "abc 123 \n  456"
>>> m = re.match(r'(?s)abc (.*)', msg)
>>> m.group(1)
'123 \n  456'

edited Jul 28, 2014 at 23:34

answered Jul 28, 2014 at 22:20

hwnd

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cdhowie · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-28 22:20:47Z

1

You need to use the re.DOTALL flag, otherwise the . regular expression atom will not match newlines.

re.DOTALL: Make the '.' special character match any character at all, including a newline; without this flag, '.' will match anything except a newline.

So this should do what you want:

m = re.match('abc (.*)', msg, re.DOTALL)

answered Jul 28, 2014 at 22:20

cdhowie

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