idiom for RE matching

[Gordon Airporte]

mik3l3374 at gmail.com wrote:
> if your search is not overly complicated, i think regexp is not
> needed. if you want, you can post a sample what you want to search,
> and some sample input.

I'm afraid it's pretty complicated :-). I'm doing analysis of hand 
histories that online poker sites leave for you. Here's one hand of a 
play money ring game:


Full Tilt Poker Game #2042984473: Table Play Chip 344 - 10/20 - Limit 
Hold'em - 18:07:20 ET - 2007/03/22
Seat 1: grandmarambo (1,595)
Seat 4: justnoldfoolm (2,430)
Seat 5: rickrn (1,890)
Seat 7: harlan312 (820)
Seat 8: moi (335)
justnoldfoolm posts the small blind of 5
rickrn posts the big blind of 10
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to moi [Jd 2c]
harlan312 calls 10
moi folds
grandmarambo calls 10
justnoldfoolm raises to 20
rickrn folds
harlan312 calls 10
grandmarambo calls 10
*** FLOP *** [7s 8s 2s]
justnoldfoolm bets 10
harlan312 raises to 20
grandmarambo calls 20
justnoldfoolm raises to 30
harlan312 calls 10
grandmarambo calls 10
*** TURN *** [7s 8s 2s] [3d]
justnoldfoolm bets 20
harlan312 calls 20
grandmarambo calls 20
*** RIVER *** [7s 8s 2s 3d] [7h]
justnoldfoolm bets 20
harlan312 folds
grandmarambo folds
Uncalled bet of 20 returned to justnoldfoolm
justnoldfoolm mucks
justnoldfoolm wins the pot (220)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 220 | Rake 0
Board: [7s 8s 2s 3d 7h]
Seat 1: grandmarambo (button) folded on the River
Seat 4: justnoldfoolm (small blind) collected (220), mucked
Seat 5: rickrn (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 7: harlan312 folded on the River
Seat 8: moi didn't bet (folded)


So I'm picking out all kinds of info about my cards, my stack, my 
betting, my position, board cards, other people's cards, etc. For 
example, this pattern picks out which player bet and how much:

betsRe   = re.compile('^(.*) bets ([\d,]*)')

I have 13 such patterns. The files I'm analyzing are just a session's 
worth of histories like this, separated by \n\n\n. All of this 
information needs to be organized by hand or by when it happened in a 
hand, so I can't just run patterns over the whole file or I'll lose context.
(Of course, in theory I could write a single monster expression that 
would chop it all up properly and organize by context, but it would be 
next to impossible to write/debug/maintain.)