[Tutor] How to use variables in regular expressions?

[Scott Moynes]

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* HY (pythonpython@hotmail.com) wrote:
> I understand that ( ) [ ] are special symbols used by Python,
> but is there a good way to solve this problem?

I think it has more to do with the fact that they are special regexp
symbols, but fortunately there is a good (and simple) way to solve
this problem.

re.escape(string) "Returns string with all non-alphanumerics
backslashed; this is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal
string that may have regular expression metacharacters in it."

So, your code would become:=20

>>> x=3D"(a)[b]c"
>>> re.search( re.escape(x)+"def", "(a)[b]cdefg")
<SRE_Match object at 0x8059810>

hth

scott
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Copyleft (c) 2001, Scott Moynes
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