How to extract the substring between two markers?

Question

Let's say I have a string 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk' and I want to extract just the '1234' part.

I only know what will be the few characters directly before AAA, and after ZZZ the part I am interested in 1234.

With sed it is possible to do something like this with a string:

echo "$STRING" | sed -e "s|.*AAA\(.*\)ZZZ.*|\1|"

And this will give me 1234 as a result.

How to do the same thing in Python?

Answer 1

Using regular expressions - documentation for further reference

import re

text = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'

m = re.search('AAA(.+?)ZZZ', text)
if m:
    found = m.group(1)

# found: 1234

or:

import re

text = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'

try:
    found = re.search('AAA(.+?)ZZZ', text).group(1)
except AttributeError:
    # AAA, ZZZ not found in the original string
    found = '' # apply your error handling

# found: 1234

Answer 2

>>> s = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'
>>> start = s.find('AAA') + 3
>>> end = s.find('ZZZ', start)
>>> s[start:end]
'1234'

Then you can use regexps with the re module as well, if you want, but that's not necessary in your case.

Answer 3

regular expression

import re

re.search(r"(?<=AAA).*?(?=ZZZ)", your_text).group(0)

The above as-is will fail with an AttributeError if there are no "AAA" and "ZZZ" in your_text

string methods

your_text.partition("AAA")[2].partition("ZZZ")[0]

The above will return an empty string if either "AAA" or "ZZZ" don't exist in your_text.

PS Python Challenge?

Answer 4

Surprised that nobody has mentioned this which is my quick version for one-off scripts:

>>> x = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'
>>> x.split('AAA')[1].split('ZZZ')[0]
'1234'

Answer 5

you can do using just one line of code

>>> import re

>>> re.findall(r'\d{1,5}','gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk')

>>> ['1234']

result will receive list...

Answer 6

import re
print re.search('AAA(.*?)ZZZ', 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk').group(1)

Answer 7

You can use re module for that:

>>> import re
>>> re.compile(".*AAA(.*)ZZZ.*").match("gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk").groups()
('1234,)

Answer 8

In python, extracting substring form string can be done using findall method in regular expression (re) module.

>>> import re
>>> s = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'
>>> ss = re.findall('AAA(.+)ZZZ', s)
>>> print ss
['1234']

Answer 9

text = 'I want to find a string between two substrings'
left = 'find a '
right = 'between two'

print(text[text.index(left)+len(left):text.index(right)])

Gives

string

Answer 10

>>> s = '/tmp/10508.constantstring'
>>> s.split('/tmp/')[1].split('constantstring')[0].strip('.')

Answer 11

With sed it is possible to do something like this with a string:

echo "$STRING" | sed -e "s|.*AAA\(.*\)ZZZ.*|\1|"

And this will give me 1234 as a result.

You could do the same with re.sub function using the same regex.

>>> re.sub(r'.*AAA(.*)ZZZ.*', r'\1', 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk')
'1234'

In basic sed, capturing group are represented by \(..\), but in python it was represented by (..).

Answer 12

You can find first substring with this function in your code (by character index). Also, you can find what is after a substring.

def FindSubString(strText, strSubString, Offset=None):
    try:
        Start = strText.find(strSubString)
        if Start == -1:
            return -1 # Not Found
        else:
            if Offset == None:
                Result = strText[Start+len(strSubString):]
            elif Offset == 0:
                return Start
            else:
                AfterSubString = Start+len(strSubString)
                Result = strText[AfterSubString:AfterSubString + int(Offset)]
            return Result
    except:
        return -1

# Example:

Text = "Thanks for contributing an answer to Stack Overflow!"
subText = "to"

print("Start of first substring in a text:")
start = FindSubString(Text, subText, 0)
print(start); print("")

print("Exact substring in a text:")
print(Text[start:start+len(subText)]); print("")

print("What is after substring \"%s\"?" %(subText))
print(FindSubString(Text, subText))

# Your answer:

Text = "gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk"
subText1 = "AAA"
subText2 = "ZZZ"

AfterText1 = FindSubString(Text, subText1, 0) + len(subText1)
BeforText2 = FindSubString(Text, subText2, 0) 

print("\nYour answer:\n%s" %(Text[AfterText1:BeforText2]))

Answer 13

Using PyParsing

import pyparsing as pp

word = pp.Word(pp.alphanums)

s = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'
rule = pp.nestedExpr('AAA', 'ZZZ')
for match in rule.searchString(s):
    print(match)

which yields:

[['1234']]

Answer 14

One liner with Python 3.8 if text is guaranteed to contain the substring:

text[text.find(start:='AAA')+len(start):text.find('ZZZ')]

Answer 15

Just in case somebody will have to do the same thing that I did. I had to extract everything inside parenthesis in a line. For example, if I have a line like 'US president (Barack Obama) met with ...' and I want to get only 'Barack Obama' this is solution:

regex = '.*\((.*?)\).*'
matches = re.search(regex, line)
line = matches.group(1) + '\n'

I.e. you need to block parenthesis with slash \ sign. Though it is a problem about more regular expressions that Python.

Also, in some cases you may see 'r' symbols before regex definition. If there is no r prefix, you need to use escape characters like in C. Here is more discussion on that.

Answer 16

also, you can find all combinations in the bellow function

s = 'Part 1. Part 2. Part 3 then more text'
def find_all_places(text,word):
    word_places = []
    i=0
    while True:
        word_place = text.find(word,i)
        i+=len(word)+word_place
        if i>=len(text):
            break
        if word_place<0:
            break
        word_places.append(word_place)
    return word_places
def find_all_combination(text,start,end):
    start_places = find_all_places(text,start)
    end_places = find_all_places(text,end)
    combination_list = []
    for start_place in start_places:
        for end_place in end_places:
            print(start_place)
            print(end_place)
            if start_place>=end_place:
                continue
            combination_list.append(text[start_place:end_place])
    return combination_list
find_all_combination(s,"Part","Part")

result:

['Part 1. ', 'Part 1. Part 2. ', 'Part 2. ']

Answer 17

In case you want to look for multiple occurences.

content ="Prefix_helloworld_Suffix_stuff_Prefix_42_Suffix_andsoon"
strings = []
for c in content.split('Prefix_'):
    spos = c.find('_Suffix')
    if spos!=-1:
        strings.append( c[:spos])
print( strings )

Or more quickly :

strings = [ c[:c.find('_Suffix')] for c in content.split('Prefix_') if c.find('_Suffix')!=-1 ]

Answer 18

Here's a solution without regex that also accounts for scenarios where the first substring contains the second substring. This function will only find a substring if the second marker is after the first marker.

def find_substring(string, start, end):
    len_until_end_of_first_match = string.find(start) + len(start)
    after_start = string[len_until_end_of_first_match:]
    return string[string.find(start) + len(start):len_until_end_of_first_match + after_start.find(end)]

Answer 19

Another way of doing it is using lists (supposing the substring you are looking for is made of numbers, only) :

string = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'
numbersList = ['0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9']
output = []

for char in string:
    if char in numbersList: output.append(char)

print(f"output: {''.join(output)}")
### output: 1234

Answer 20

Typescript. Gets string in between two other strings.

Searches shortest string between prefixes and postfixes

prefixes - string / array of strings / null (means search from the start).

postfixes - string / array of strings / null (means search until the end).

public getStringInBetween(str: string, prefixes: string | string[] | null,
                          postfixes: string | string[] | null): string {

    if (typeof prefixes === 'string') {
        prefixes = [prefixes];
    }

    if (typeof postfixes === 'string') {
        postfixes = [postfixes];
    }

    if (!str || str.length < 1) {
        throw new Error(str + ' should contain ' + prefixes);
    }

    let start = prefixes === null ? { pos: 0, sub: '' } : this.indexOf(str, prefixes);
    const end = postfixes === null ? { pos: str.length, sub: '' } : this.indexOf(str, postfixes, start.pos + start.sub.length);

    let value = str.substring(start.pos + start.sub.length, end.pos);
    if (!value || value.length < 1) {
        throw new Error(str + ' should contain string in between ' + prefixes + ' and ' + postfixes);
    }

    while (true) {
        try {
            start = this.indexOf(value, prefixes);
        } catch (e) {
            break;
        }
        value = value.substring(start.pos + start.sub.length);
        if (!value || value.length < 1) {
            throw new Error(str + ' should contain string in between ' + prefixes + ' and ' + postfixes);
        }
    }

    return value;
}

Answer 21

a simple approach could be the following:

string_to_search_in = 'could be anything'
start = string_to_search_in.find(str("sub string u want to identify"))
length = len("sub string u want to identify")
First_part_removed = string_to_search_in[start:]
end_coord = length
Extracted_substring=First_part_removed[:end_coord]

Answer 22

If you want to check whether the substrings exists and return empty string if they don't:

def substr_between(str_all, first_string, last_string):
    pos1 = str_all.find(first_string)
    if pos1 < 0:
        return ""
    pos1 += len(first_string)
    pos2 = str_all[pos1:].find(last_string)
    if pos2 < 0:
        return ""
    return str_all[pos1:pos1 + pos2]

Answer 23

One liners that return other string if there was no match. Edit: improved version uses next function, replace "not-found" with something else if needed:

import re
res = next( (m.group(1) for m in [re.search("AAA(.*?)ZZZ", "gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk" ),] if m), "not-found" )

My other method to do this, less optimal, uses regex 2nd time, still didn't found a shorter way:

import re
res = ( ( re.search("AAA(.*?)ZZZ", "gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk") or re.search("()","") ).group(1) )