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Lets assume I have the following string:

string = "xxx abc123 xxx"

I want the regular expression to replace the digits in the string that begin with 'abc'. I have tried the following, but with no luck:

re.sub(r'\d{1,3}\babc','456',string)

Thanks.

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  • What does your expected output for "xxx abc123 xxx" look like? Commented Jun 1, 2011 at 21:35
  • It should look like 'xxx abc456 xxx' Commented Jun 1, 2011 at 21:37
  • Is it always preceded by 'xxx abc'? Commented Jun 1, 2011 at 21:40

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re.sub(r'(?<=abc)\d{1,3}', '456', string)
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Thank you. This has been very helpful. After doing some more research on this, I believe this expression is called a: positive lookbehind assertion.

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