Issue with regular expression output

Question

I am using the following code to filter out phone numbers from a text file.

import re

pattern = (r'\d*-\d*-\d*')
names = (r'\w*')

with open('records.txt', 'r') as f:
    for line in f:
        matches = re.findall(pattern, line)
        namesMatch = re.findall(names, line) 
        if matches:
            print(matches)
        elif namesMatch:
            print(namesMatch + ":")`

I am getting the following output:

['John']
['222-333-4447']
['423-444-5678']
['123-455-1223']
['Paul']
['423-444-5778']

I want a similar output but in string format like below:

John:
222-333-4447
423-444-5678
123-455-1223
Paul:
423-444-5778

I am getting the following output: ['123-455-1223'] ['222-333-4447'] ['423-444-5678'] ['123-455-1223'] ['221-353-4747'] ['423-444-5778'] I want a similar output but in string format like below: 123-455-1223 222-333-4447 423-444-5678 123-455-1223 221-353-4747 423-444-5778 — Nithin
– Nithin, Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:02
it sounds like you have more details to add to this question ... please add the additional comments to the question as code, include both a given input and the expected output for that input — Joran Beasley
– Joran Beasley, Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:25
@JoranBeasley I have edited the code. I am getting the following output: ['John']enter code here ['222-333-4447'] ['423-444-5678'] ['123-455-1223'] ['Paul'] ['423-444-5778'] I want a similar output but in string format like below: John: 222-333-4447 423-444-5678 123-455-1223 Paul: 423-444-5778 — Nithin
– Nithin, Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:33
please provide a snippet of sample input and then we can probably help ... and make sure our example input actually looks like your input because the answer you get will look like that @Nithin — Joran Beasley
– Joran Beasley, Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:34
Maybe re.findall(r'(\w+):((?:\s*\d+-\d+-\d+)+)', f.read())? Or, something like regex101.com/r/7FaFEk/1? — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:47

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-21 14:06:02Z

1

You can use

import re
text = """John................. .............222-333-4447....... .. 423-444-5678 .... .................123-455-1223............... ........Paul... ......423-444-5778....................................... – 
Nithin"""
pattern=r"(\w+)((?:[\s:.]*\d+[-—–]\d+[-—–]\d+)+)"
print( [(x, " ".join(y.replace('.','').split())) for x,y in re.findall(pattern, text)] )

Output:

[('John', '222-333-4447 423-444-5678 123-455-1223'), ('Paul', '423-444-5778')]

See the Python demo.

Details:

(\w+) - Group 1: one or more word chars
((?:[\s:.]*\d+[-—–]\d+[-—–]\d+)+) - Group 1: one or more occurrences of the following pattern sequence
- [\s:.]* - zero or more whitespaces, colons and dots
- \d+ - one or more digits
- [-—–] - a hyphen or dash
- \d+[-—–]\d+ - one or more digits, a dash, one or more digits.

answered Jun 21, 2022 at 14:06

Wiktor Stribiżew

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