New to using re. Search for a number before a string.
Mark Lawrence
breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk
Sat Nov 2 09:31:59 EDT 2013
On 01/11/2013 21:33, Captain Dunsel wrote:
> I have a text file that has lines with numbers occasionally appearing right before a person's name. For example:
>
> COLLEGE:ENROLLMENT:COMPLETED EVALUATIONS:624309FUDD, ELMER
>
> where I want to search for the name "ELMER FUDD" and extract the number right in front of it "608309" when such a number appears but the length of the number is variable and using ?<= in a regular expression will only search for a fixed length.
>
> Any ideas appreciated!
>
As you've had answers here's some references for future use
http://docs.python.org/3/howto/regex.html,
https://wiki.python.org/moin/RegularExpression and
http://www.regular-expressions.info/python.html
Also, the new regex package is an alternative to the stdlib re package.
It's available from https://pypi.python.org/pypi/regex
--
Python is the second best programming language in the world.
But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer
Mark Lawrence
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