Regex question

[Jonas Galvez]

I've a perhaps unusual piece of data to parse with regexes.
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> import re
>>> re.findall("a (\w ?)*", "a b c d e f g h")[/color][/color][/color]
['h']

This is a very very very simplified example. The result I was
expecting is the following: ['a', 'b', 'c'] ... and so forth. Is it
impossible to repeat a pattern group inside another?


Tia,



\\ jonas galvez
// jonasgalvez.com

[Luke]

Re: Regex question

Jonas Galvez wrote:[color=blue]
> I've a perhaps unusual piece of data to parse with regexes.
>
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>>import re
>>>>re.findall( "a (\w ?)*", "a b c d e f g h")[/color][/color]
>
> ['h']
>
> This is a very very very simplified example. The result I was
> expecting is the following: ['a', 'b', 'c'] ... and so forth. Is it
> impossible to repeat a pattern group inside another?[/color]

Are you hoping for your regular expression to match the whole string, or
just one letter? This is how I would get the result you seek:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> import re
>>> re.findall("\w" , "a b c d e f g h")[/color][/color][/color]
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h']

The regular expression you used, "a (\w ?)*", will match the whole string,
which is why you have only one element in the list returned by findall.
Since you used a group (using parentheses), findall only returned what was
inside the group (the 'h') rather than the whole match ('a b c d e f g h').