How can we skip some part in the string using regex

Question

I have a string:

st="[~620cc13778d079432b9bc7b1:Hello WorldGuest]"

I just want the part after ":" and before "]". The part in between can have a maximum length of 64 characters.

The part after "[~" is 24 character UUID.

So the resulting string would be "Hello WorldGuest".

I'm using the following regex:

r"(\[\~[a-z0-9]{24}:)(?=.{0,64})"

But that is only matching the string till ":", I also want to match the ending "]".

dawg · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-15 21:13:32Z

1

Given:

>>> import re
>>> st = "[~620cc13778d079432b9bc7b1:Hello WorldGuest]"

Two simple ways:

>>> re.sub(r'[^:]*:([^\]]*)\]',r'\1',st)
'Hello WorldGuest'
>>> st.partition(':')[-1].rstrip(']')
'Hello WorldGuest'

If you want to be super specific:

>>> re.sub(r'^\[~[a-z0-9]{24}:([^\]]{0,64})\]$',r'\1',st)
'Hello WorldGuest'

If you want to correct your pattern, you can do:

>>> m=re.search(r'(?:\[~[a-z0-9]{24}:)(?=([^\]]{0,64})\])', st)
>>> m.group(1)
'Hello WorldGuest'

Or with anchors:

>>> m=re.search(r'(?:^\[~[a-z0-9]{24}:)(?=([^\]]{0,64})\]$)', st)
>>> m.group(1)
'Hello WorldGuest'

Note:

I just used your regex for a UUID even though it is not correct. The correct regex for a UUID is:

[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}

But that would not match your example...

answered Jun 15, 2022 at 12:46

dawg

105k24 gold badges143 silver badges217 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Answer 1