Find all the words in string except one word in python with regex

Question

I'm working with regex in python and I'd like to search for all the words in a string except one word. Code:

import re
string = "The world is too big"
print re.findall("regex", string)

If I want to get all the words except for the word "too" (so the output will be ["The", "world", "is", "big"]), How can I implement this in regex?

Not every string problem is a regex problem. Split on whitespace, then filter your list to remove the items you don't want. — Chris
– Chris, Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 18:31
If you want to play around while learning regular expressions, the online testers are pretty convenient: regex101.com is one. — wwii
– wwii, Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 18:35
' '.join(list(filter(lambda w: w != 'too', string.split()))) or ' '.join(w for w in string.split() if w != 'too') — boot-scootin
– boot-scootin, Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 18:39

Taku · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-24 18:58:40Z

1

You don't even need to use regex for this task, simply use split and filter:

sentence = "The world is too big"
sentence = list(filter(lambda x: x != 'too', sentence.split()))
print(sentence)

answered Mar 24, 2017 at 18:31

Taku

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5 Comments

I'm not crazy about the use of string for a variable name here, especially when it becomes a list. Please consider renaming your variables.

sure, I only used it because of OP's example

In Python 3, filter returns a generator, so you'd have to do print(list(sentence)), or something like that to actually see the words.

@not_a_robot I'm pretty sure the OP's using python 2, but adding a list() wouldn't hurt

@abccd I just added my comment for future folks coming to this question who may be using 3 :)

Shenglin Chen · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-24 21:47:49Z

1

Delete 'too' in string, then split string.

re.sub(r'\btoo\b','',string).split()
Out[15]: ['The', 'world', 'is', 'big']

answered Mar 24, 2017 at 21:47

Shenglin Chen

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