could you please help me with regex

[gintare]

I want to find all repeating pattersn with start with 1-2degits, contains some text, strange scharacters and numbers and finishes with 4 digits.

For example,

ref=""" 1. Lieber, C. M. The incredible shrinking circuit. Sci. Am. 285, 58±64 (2001).
2. Cui, Y. & Lieber, C. M. Functional nanoscale electronic devices assembled using silicon nanowire
building blocks. Science 291, 851±853 (2001).
3. Wang, J. F., Gudiksen, M. S., Duan, X. F., Cui, Y. & Lieber, C. M. Highly polarized photolumi-
nescence and photodetection from single indium phosphide nanowires. Science 293, 1455±1457
(2001)."""

quer="\d{1,2}\.\s+.+\(\d{4}\)\."
ansre=re.findall(quer,ref,re.DOTALL)
print(len(ansre))

It fineds only one pattern.

If i use

quer="\d{1,2}\.\s+"

i find 23 patterns, but of course this captures only the beginning of the pattern, i.e. 1-2 digits.

If i add .+, i am finding only one pattern:

quer="\d{1,2}\.\s+\.+"

I do not know how to mark that any character can be between 1-2 and 4 numbers in the patters. If i use .+ to mark this, when regex captures full text, it does not stop at 4 digits.

Thank you!

[Rabbit]

You need to define what you mean by "contains some text" and "strange scharacters". Those terms are too vague and I have no idea what you mean by them.

But if your goal is to break out those references. Then you can use this

\d{1,2}\.[^(]+\(\d{4}\)\.

This is assuming that your test data is representative and there are never any parentheses except for the ones around the year at the end of the reference.

[gintare]

The problem is that there can be parenthesis in the text.
I do not know how to define "any character" between

\d+\.

and

\d+\)\.

. If i use

.+

it captures all text, but i need to capture as many lines as there are starting with

\d+\.

and ending with

\d+\)\.

[gintare]

I have tried this:

\d+\.\s+[\sa-zA-Z0-9±&,:;.)(-]+

but it captures only 3 lines of 21 (Number 3, 11, 15 from the text below). DO not know why. Full text to be searched looks like this:

ref="""
1. Haraguchi, K., Katsuyama, T., Hiruma, K. & Ogawa, K. GaAs p-n junction formed in quantum wire
crystals. Appl. Phys. Lett. 60, 745 747 (1992).
2. Björk, M. T. et al. Nanowire resonant tunneling diodes. App. Phys.Lett. 81, 4458±4460 (2002).
3. Thelander, C. et al. Single electron transistors in heterostructure nanowires. Appl. Phys. Lett. 83,
2052±2054 (2003).
4. Wagner,R. S.in Whisker Technology (ed. Levitt, A. P.) 47±119 (Wiley. New York, 1970)
5. Hiruma, K. et al. Growth and optical properties of nanometer scale GaAs and InAs whiskers. J. Appl.
Phys. 77, 447±462 (1995).
6. Duan, X. & Lieber, C. M. General synthesis of compound semiconductor nanowires. Adv. Mater. 12,
298±302 (2000).
7. Duan, X. & Lieber, C. M. Laser assisted catalytic growth of single crystal GaN nanowires. J. Am. Chem.
Soc. 122, 188±189 (2000).
8. Ohlsson, B. J. et al. Size , shape , and position controlled GaAs nano whiskers. Appl. Phys. Lett. 79,
3335±3337 (2001).
9. Kamins, T. I., Stanley Williams, R., Basile, D. P., Hesjedal, T. & Harris, J. S. Ti catalyzed Si nanowires by
chemical vapor deposition: Microscopy and growth mechanisms. J. Appl. Phys. 89, 1008±1016 (2001).
10. Ohlsson, B. J. et al. Growth and characterization of GaAs and InAs nano whiskers and InAs/GaAs
heterostructures. Physica E 13, 1126±1130 (2002).
11. Buffat, P. & Borel, J. P. Size effect on the melting temperature of gold particles. Phys. Rev. A 13,
2287±2298 (1976).
12. Björk, M. T. et al. One dimensional steeplechase for electrons realized. Nano Lett. 2, 87±89 (2002).
13. Gudiksen, M. S., Lauhon, L. J., Wang, J., Smith, D. S. & Lieber, C. M. Growth of nanowires superlattice
structures for nanoscale photonics and electronics. Nature 415, 617±620 (2002).
14. Wu, Y., Fan, R. & Yang, P. Block by block growth of single crystalline Si/SiGe superlattice nanowires.
Nano Lett. 2, 83±86 (2002).
15. Baker, R. T. K. Catalytic growth of carbon filaments. Carbon 27, 315±323 (1989).
16. Helveg, S. et al. Atomic scale imaging of carbon nanofibre growth. Nature 427, 426±429 (2004).
17. Massalski, T. B. (ed.) Binary Alloy Phase Diagrams 2nd edn Vol. 1 369±371 (ASM International,
Materials Park, Ohio, 1990).
18. Gupta, R. P., Khokle, W. S., Wuerfl, J. & Hartnagel, H. L. Diffusion of gallium in thin gold films on
GaAs. Thin Solid Films. 151, L121±L125 (1987).
19. Massalski, T. B. (ed.) Binary Alloy Phase Diagrams 1st edn Vol. 1 191±192 (ASM International, Metals
Park, Ohio, 1986).
20. Magnusson, M. H., Deppert, K., Malm, J. O., Bovin, J. O. & Samuelson, L. Gold nanoparticles:production, reshaping, and thermal charging. J. Nanoparticle Res. 1, 243±251 (1999).
21. Bakkers, E. & Verheijen, M. A. Synthesis of InP nanotubes. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 3440±3441 (2003). """

[gintare]

I find out why regex captured lines 3,11,15. Because they contains /
If i use

\d+\.\s+[\sa-zA-Z0-9/±&,:;.)(öÖäÄåÅ-]*\d{4}\)\.

all text is captured, the same as if i would be using

\d+\..+\d{4}\)\.

SO, question remains , how to define any character between other two sets of characters? In my case i want to capture 21 lines.

[Rabbit]

By default, regex uses greedy matching. That's why it doesn't stop after the first occurrence of a match. You need to tell it be be non-greedy.

You can do that by putting a ? after the qualifiers: * . + ?

\d{1,2}\..+?\(\d{4}\)\.