CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexpython-3.xtuples
NoviceProgrammer
NoviceProgrammer

Reputation: 257

Quick Regex Python 3 not working

if re.findall(r"i am .*", a):
    reg = re.compile(r" i am ([\w]+).*?$")
    print('How long have you been {}?'.format(*reg.findall(a)))

So if i input:

i am struggling with life...

it should output:

How long have you been struggling?

But for some reason i get a tuple error?

By the way a is just an input field.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "program.py", line 14, in <module>
    print('How long have you been {}?'.format(*reg.findall(a)))
IndexError: tuple index out of range

Upvotes: 1

Views: 574

Answers (1)

Martijn Pieters
Martijn Pieters

Reputation: 1121744

Your second regular expression doesn't match:

re.compile(r" i am ([\w]+).*?$")

because it starts with a space. Remove that initial space and it works fine:

>>> a = 'i am struggling with life...'
>>> reg = re.compile(r" i am ([\w]+).*?$")
>>> reg.findall(a)
[]
>>> reg = re.compile(r"i am ([\w]+).*?$")
>>> reg.findall(a)
['struggling']

The exception you see is thrown because the .format() method receives positional arguments as a tuple, tries to look up item 0 and as it was passed an empty set of arguments you get the IndexError.

Upvotes: 2

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