CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexextract
Powerrangers
Powerrangers

Reputation: 39

Extracting first name and last name in Python

I'm trying to extract all the first names AND the last names (ex: John Johnson) in a big text (about 20 pages).

I used split with \. as separator and there is my regular expression:

\b([A-Z]{1}[a-z]+\s{1})([A-Z]{1}[a-z]+)\b

Unfortunately, I only get all the lines of my text instead of only the first names and last names:

Suddenly, Mary Poppins flew away with her umbrella
Later in the day, John.... bla bla bla

Could someone help me?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 10533

Answers (2)

AsTeR
AsTeR

Reputation: 7521

I've adapted one regular expression that can handle accents and dash for composed names:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import re
r = re.compile('([A-Z]\w+(?=[\s\-][A-Z])(?:[\s\-][A-Z]\w+)+)',
           re.UNICODE)
tests = {
    u'Jean Vincent Placé': u'Jean Vincent Placé est un excellent donneur de leçons',
    u'Giovanni Delle Bande Nere': u'In quest\'anno Giovanni Delle Bande Nere ha avuto tre momenti di gloria',
    # Here 'BDFL' may not be whished
    u'BDFL Guido Van Rossum': u'Nobody hacks Python like BDFL Guido Van Rossum because he created it'
}
for expected, s in tests.iteritems():
    match = r.search(s)
    assert(match is not None)
    extracted = match.group(0)
    print expected
    print extracted
    assert(expected == match.group(0))

Upvotes: 1

Jack burridge
Jack burridge

Reputation: 520

Try

regex = re.compile("\b([A-Z]{1}[a-z]+) ([A-Z]{1}[a-z]+)\b")
string = """Suddenly, Mary Poppins flew away with her umbrella
Later in the day, John Johnson did something."""
regex.findall(string)

The output I got was:

[(u'Mary', u'Poppins'), (u'John', u'Johnson')]

Upvotes: 2

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