New to using re. Search for a number before a string.

[Mark Lawrence]

On 03/11/2013 00:19, Captain Dunsel wrote:
> On Friday, November 1, 2013 5:33:43 PM UTC-4, Captain Dunsel wrote:
>> I have a text file that has lines with numbers occasionally appearing right before a person's name.  For example:
>>
>>
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>> COLLEGE:ENROLLMENT:COMPLETED EVALUATIONS:624309FUDD, ELMER
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>>
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>> 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.
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>>
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>> Any ideas appreciated!
>
> Thanks for your help, everyone!
>

My invoice, like the proverbial cheque, is in the post :)

Slight aside, in order to avoid the unwanted newlines above could you 
please read and action this, thanks 
https://wiki.python.org/moin/GoogleGroupsPython

-- 
Python is the second best programming language in the world.
But the best has yet to be invented.  Christian Tismer

Mark Lawrence