CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexunicode
D T
D T

Reputation: 677

Python regex matching unicode emoticons

I am trying to build a regex to match different possible combinations of negative unicode emoticons. I am having a problem matching the types of emoticons contained in the list test_2 below. Although I believe that the non-alphanumeric symbols that conform the emoticons are correctly placed inside the regex, neither the emoticons nor the left eye (captured group with the name eye1) are matched... How could I solve it? Thanks

neg_emoticon_regular = ur"""
  [\(（]?     #optional left parenthesis
  \s*         #optional space   
  [\`\#\ ́]?   #optional symbols between left parenthesis and left eye
  (?P<eye1>[\ｰ\; \́\`\・\>Tt\ー\ ̄\−\-\゚~\_\.\>\*\/]) #left eye
  \s*         #optional space                     
  [\｡\。\Δ\-\人\O\0\.\Д\д\o\−\＿\ω\ヘ\^\_]? #mouth
  \s*         #optional space  
  [(?P=eye1)\`\<\’]   #right eye, usually will match left eye                
  [\A\#\;]?   #optional symbols between right eye and right parenthesis
  \s*         #optional space
  [\)\）]?    #optional right parenthesis   
"""

neg_emoticon_re = re.compile(neg_emoticon_regular, re.VERBOSE  | re.UNICODE)
test_2 = ["(−_−＃)","(-｡-;","(-_-)"] #negative emoticons to match
for e in test_2:
    e_uc_norm = unicodedata.normalize('NFKC', e.decode("utf-8"))
    m = neg_emoticon_re.search(e_uc_norm) 
    if m: print "eye1:",m.group("eye1") #print the symbol that is supposed to be the left eye
    print len(neg_emoticon_re.findall(e_uc_norm)), e_uc_norm

Upvotes: 2

Views: 930

Answers (1)

MRAB
MRAB

Reputation: 20644

In a regex, [...] is a set of characters, so [\(（] will match either and open parenthesis or a space (it can be shortened to [( ]), and [\s+]? will match an optional whitespace character or a plus sign.

Upvotes: 3

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