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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Word Length

Posted by baderalsayegh
baderalsayegh
19,026 Points

havinf problem with the int varaible in re.find all

Create a function named find_words that takes a count and a string. Return a list of all of the words in the string that are count word characters long or longer

I really dont understand why it cannot read my int variable as a multiplier of the string len,

the code is working if you change the word = re.findall(r'\w{a}', str) into word = re.findall(r'\w{6}', str) the number it self.

can you help me out of here thank you

word_length.py 
import re

# EXAMPLE:
# >>> find_words(4, "dog, cat, baby, balloon, me")
# ['baby', 'balloon']

def find_words(a, str):
    new = []
    word = re.findall(r'\w{a,}', str)
    new.append(word)
    return new

1 Answer

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points

The issue is the variable a is not being used. In the regex string r'\w{a,}' the "a" is treated as the Unicode character "a" and not interpreted as the variable a.

To use the variable a, it must be included outside of the string:

r'\w{' + str(a) + ',}'

or inserted through string formatting:

r'\w{{{0},}}'.format(a)

# or

r'\w{%s,}' % a

The second issue is the return value. findall() returns a list, so word can be returned directly without appending it into the list new

    return word
baderalsayegh
baderalsayegh
19,026 Points

thanks cris