CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexdate
user2399453
user2399453

Reputation: 3081

Date regex python

I am trying to match dates in a string where the date is formatted as (month dd, yyyy). I am confused by what I see when I use my regex pattern below. It only matches strings that begin with a date. What am I missing?

 >>> p = re.compile('[A-z]{3}\s{1,}\d{1,2}[,]\s{1,}\d{4}')
 >>> s = "xyz Dec 31, 2013 - Jan 4, 2014"
 >>> print p.match(s).start()
 Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'start'

 >>> s = "Dec 31, 2013 - Jan 4, 2014"
 >>> print p.match(s).start()
 0 #Correct

Upvotes: 0

Views: 123

Answers (3)

Iron Fist
Iron Fist

Reputation: 10951

Use re.findall rather than re.match, it will return to you list of all matches:

>>> s = "Dec 31, 2013 - Jan 4, 2014"
>>> r = re.findall(r'[A-z]{3}\s{1,}\d{1,2}[,]\s{1,}\d{4}',s)
>>> r
['Dec 31, 2013', 'Jan 4, 2014']
>>>
>>> s = 'xyz Dec 31, 2013 - Jan 4, 2014'
>>> r = re.findall(r'[A-z]{3}\s{1,}\d{1,2}[,]\s{1,}\d{4}',s)
>>> r
['Dec 31, 2013', 'Jan 4, 2014']

From Python docs:

re.match(pattern, string, flags=0) If zero or more characters at the beginning of string match the regular expression pattern, return a corresponding MatchObject instance

In the other hand:

findall() matches all occurrences of a pattern, not just the first one as search() does.

Upvotes: 2

SBH
SBH

Reputation: 120

Use the search method instead of match. Match compares the whole string but search finds the matching part.

Upvotes: 1

vks
vks

Reputation: 67968

p = re.compile(r'.*?[A-Za-z]{3}\s{1,}\d{1,2}[,]\s{1,}\d{4}')

match matches a string from start.if start does is not same it will fail.In the first example xyz will be consumed by [A-Za-z]{3} but rest of the string will not match.

You can directly use your regex with re.findall and get the result without caring about the location of the match.

Upvotes: 1

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