CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexpython-2.7
Rilcon42
Rilcon42

Reputation: 9763

regex account for single letters or multiple based on list

My goal is to find all matches in a word list using regex. I got it working, but I would like to be able to specify multiple letters and have each letter occur only the number of times it is specified.

my code:

import re
with open('wordlist.txt') as f:
    content = f.readlines()

def search(regex):
    pattern=re.compile(regex)
    for word in content:
        word=word.strip()
        if(pattern.findall(word)):
            print(word)

Examples:

search(r'^(b|e|a|c|h|e|s|q|r){7}$') match only words with 7 of those 9 letters. only letters in the word can be those 9. In this case beaches would be returned
search(r'^(f|o|o|c|l|t){4}$') match only words with 4 of those 6 letters. only letters in the word can be those 6. In this case foot and fool and colt would be returned
search(r'^(f|o|d|c|l|t){4}$') match only words with 4 of those 6 letters. only letters in the word can be those 6. In this case only colt would be returned

Upvotes: 1

Views: 34

Answers (1)

AnotherParker
AnotherParker

Reputation: 790

I don't think that a regex is the way to go here. You don't care about order, just about how many of each letter there are. That sounds like a job for an array or a dict.

How about making the argument to search a dict where the keys are each letter, and the values are the number of times that letter is allowed to appear? Then just deep copy the dict, iterate over the string, and decrement. If the key's not found, or it's already 0, fail and move on to the next string.

Upvotes: 1

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