regex in python: match any non-digit character between two words

Question

Hello I'm playing around with regular expressions in pythex and i'm having troubles. i'm trying to take the following string

"RANDOM 1 ABBBABBBA SDFSBSBS WBWBSBW WBWBWBWB 10 EBEBEBEB EHRHSHSD EBWBBSHSHSB //"

and grab all the non-numeral characters between RANDOM and the forwards slashes. How do I do this with regular expressions? Help!

So you want to ignore the numerical characters but still grab everything else between RANDOM and //? Is it possible for you to use two regex? — xtj7, Mar 04 '18 at 22:55

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '18 at 23:43

This is a possible solution:

import re

s = 'RANDOM 1 ABBBABBBA SDFSBSBS WBWBSBW WBWBWBWB 10 EBEBEBEB EHRHSHSD EBWBBSHSHSB //'

pattern = r'(?<=RANDOM).*?(?=//)'
match = re.search(pattern, s)
textBetween = match.group(0)
notNumeric = re.sub(r'\d', '', textBetween)

print(notNumeric)

(?<=RANDOM): looks for text preceded by RANDOM (lookbehind assertion).
(?=//): looks for text followed by // (lookahead assertion).

Sean Breckenridge · Answer 2 · 2018-03-05T00:06:09.290

import re
text = 'RANDOM 1 ABBBABBBA SDFSBSBS WBWBSBW WBWBWBWB 10 EBEBEBEB EHRHSHSD EBWBBSHSHSB //'

for between_text in re.findall(r'(?<=RANDOM)(.+?)(?=\/\/)', text):
    for word_match in re.findall(r'\b[^\d\W]+\b', between_text):
        print(word_match)

Output:

ABBBABBBA
SDFSBSBS
WBWBSBW
WBWBWBWB
EBEBEBEB
EHRHSHSD
EBWBBSHSHSB

(?<=RANDOM)(.+?)(?=\/\/) :

(?<=RANDOM) is positive lookbehind, it matches the RANDOM before the text, (.+?) matches all the text in between and (?=\/\/) is positive lookahead, which matches the two \/\/'s. More about (.+?)(?=\/\/).

\b[^\d\W]+\b :

\b matches word boundaries, and [^\d\W]+ is a negated set that matches digits and non-words (so it matches non-digits, and words); the + signifies it matches one or more characters.

regex in python: match any non-digit character between two words

2 Answers2