Extract specific words from text in python using regular expression

Question

I have the following text for example:

[ABC]something
    foo 25
    bar 20

[DEF]something
    foo 50

.....and other similar text like this

I want to extract the three words from the brackets, foo and bar and the digits so i can get the result of re.findall as something like this [('ABC', 'foo 25', bar 20'), ('DEF', 'foo 50')]

I tried the following pattern, but returns many empty strings in list

\[(\w+)\]|\n\s+(\w+\s\d+)

Use two expressions or a parser altogether.

Jan
– Jan

2020-06-09 07:32:06 +00:00
Commented Jun 9, 2020 at 7:32 — Jan
– Jan, Commented Jun 9, 2020 at 7:32

Jan · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-09 07:58:54Z

2

You may use

import re

data = """
[ABC]something
    foo 25
    bar 20

[DEF]something
    foo 50
"""

rx_outer = re.compile(r'''
    ^
    \[(?P<section>[^][]+)\]
    (?P<content>(?:.+[\r\n]?)+)
    ''', re.M | re.X)

rx_inner = re.compile(r'\w+\s+\d+')

result = []
for outer in rx_outer.finditer(data):
    section = outer.group('section')
    values = tuple([value.group(0) for value in rx_inner.finditer(outer.group('content'))])
    result.append((section,) + values)

print(result)

Or - as a list comprehension:

result = [(section,) + tuple([value.group(0) for value in rx_inner.finditer(outer.group('content'))])
          for outer in rx_outer.finditer(data)
          for section in [outer.group('section')]]

print(result)

Bot will yield

[('ABC', 'foo 25', 'bar 20'), ('DEF', 'foo 50')]

See the demo for the "outer" and the inner expressions, the rest is programming logic.

edited Jun 9, 2020 at 7:58

answered Jun 9, 2020 at 7:40

Jan

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3 Comments

Dominic Over a year ago

thanks, but that replicated 'ABC'.. i want it to be ('ABC', 'foo 25', 'bar 20') 😅

Jan Over a year ago

@user13711798: Ah, one moment then.

Dominic Over a year ago

Thanks. It worked. But this seems way more advanced for me. I was expecting to obtain results directly from re.findall. I will try to learn this in the meantime. Also sorry, it wont let me upvote :(.

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