CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregex
Baktaawar
Baktaawar

Reputation: 7500

Extracting string with set no. of hyphen

If I have an example string as follows: 

LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-COMPANY_ORG_CHART-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-END

I want to extract only the first n no. of steps where n is defined by the no. of hyphens in between. 

So if n=5,

I want only the first 5 steps.

Output: 

LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING

I tried this: 

s1=re.search(r'([A-za-z_].*-{0,5}[A-za-z_].*?)',s)
print(s1.group())

But it is giving whole string as output. 

LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-COMPANY_ORG_CHART-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-END
In [ ]:

Upvotes: 0

Views: 95

Answers (2)

Josh Withee
Josh Withee

Reputation: 11346

Give this a try:

s1 = re.search(r'^([A-za-z_]+-){0,4}[A-za-z_]+',s)
print(s1)

(this example is for n=5)

Upvotes: 0

G. Anderson
G. Anderson

Reputation: 5955

If this is the actual format, then regex may be overkill for the sample provided. One other option is just using string methods and indexing:

x='LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-COMPANY_ORG_CHART-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-END'

print('-'.join(x.split('-')[:5]))

'LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING-LEARNING'

Upvotes: 6

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