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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Players Dictionary and Class

Posted by Jose Coto
Jose Coto
11,466 Points

Player regex

I'm having problems to complete the task of generating the class Player. Help will be appreciated.

players.py 
import re

string = '''Love, Kenneth: 20
Chalkley, Andrew: 25
McFarland, Dave: 10
Kesten, Joy: 22
Stewart Pinchback, Pinckney Benton: 18'''

players = re.match(r"(?P<last_name>[\w]+\s?[\w]+?),\s(?P<first_name>[\w]+\s?[\w]+?):\s(?P<score>[\d]+)", string, re.M)

class Player

def __init__(self):
  for match in players.finditer(string):
    self.last_name = match.group("last_name")
    self.first_name = match.group("first_name")
    self.score = match.group("score")

4 Answers

Iain Simmons
MOD
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points
Iain Simmons
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points

Check your syntax for creating a class and the indentation for the __init__ method within it.

Jose Coto
Jose Coto
11,466 Points
Jose Coto
Jose Coto
11,466 Points

Thank you for catching my mistakes. I wasn't sure if you could use the init with a loop but it turns that you can! By the way do you have any clues on how to get all the last names and not the last one? Thats the result that I have when I instantiate the class. Thanks again!

Drew Butcher
Drew Butcher
33,160 Points
Drew Butcher
Drew Butcher
33,160 Points

I think it's just indentation and a colon.... try

class Player():
  def __init__(self):
    for match in players.finditer(string):
      self.last_name = match.group("last_name")
      self.first_name = match.group("first_name")
      self.score = match.group("score")
Iain Simmons
MOD
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points
Iain Simmons
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points

Okay, so a couple things regarding your regex syntax:

  • If you only have one thing in the character class (between the square brackets [...]), then you don't need them, since they will match any of the multiple characters within them.
  • Using +? together after a character or group makes it a lazy quantifier, which basically means it will return as few matches as possible. Try using the asterisk/star symbol (*), since it means 'zero or more', but is also 'greedy', and therefore will return as many matches as possible.