CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python-2.7
q0987
q0987

Reputation: 35982

How to enforce greedy matching in Python regular expression

In [30]: s = '123 45$78 98@abc %'

In [31]: print re.findall(r'\b[\w]+ ?', s)
['123 ', '45', '78 ', '98', 'abc ']

In [32]: print re.findall(r'(\b[\w]+ ?)', s)
['123 ', '45', '78 ', '98', 'abc ']

In [33]: print re.findall(r'(\b[\w]+ ?)+', s)
['45', '98', 'abc ']

The expected results are as follows:

['123 45', '78 98', 'abc ']

Question> The focus of this question is not related to how to split a string. Instead, I want to know whether python allows us to do greedy matching.

Thank you

Upvotes: 0

Views: 66

Answers (1)

tobias_k
tobias_k

Reputation: 82899

Python does greedy matching. The problem is that your regular expression seems to be wrong.

With [\w]+ ?, you are matching some characters, optionally followed by a space. What you seem to want is just some characters or spaces mixed together. Try this:

In [10]: re.findall(r'\b[\w ]+', s)
Out[10]: ['123 45', '78 98', 'abc ']

Upvotes: 1

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