CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregex
Torched90
Torched90

Reputation: 305

Python 3 - Regular Expression - Match string with one character less

So I want to write a regex that matches with a word that is one character less than the word. So for example:

wordList = ['inherit', 'inherent']
for word in wordList:
    if re.match('^inhe....', word):
        print(word)

And in theory, it would print both inherit and inherent, but I can only get it to print inherent. So how can I match with a word one letter short without just erasing one of the dots (.)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 238

Answers (2)

Thiago Curvelo
Thiago Curvelo

Reputation: 3740

(Edited)

For matching only inherent, you could use .{4}:

re.match('^inhe.{4}', word)

Or ....$:

re.match('^inhe....$')

Upvotes: 3

deadcode
deadcode

Reputation: 2296

A regex may not be the best tool here, if you just want to know if word Y starts with the first N-1 letters of word X, do this:

if Y.startswith( X[:-1] ):
    # Do whatever you were trying to do.

X[:-1] gets all but the last character of X (or the empty string if X is the empty string).

Y.startswith( 'blah' ) returns true if Y starts with 'blah'.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions