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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Escape Hatches

Posted by harmeet
harmeet
698 Points

Re.Search Not Giving Desired Output

Hi there,

Here's what I wrote:-

import re

a = open("names.txt")

data = a.read()

a.close()

print(re.match(r'Love',data))

print(re.search(r'\w, \w',data))

print (re.search(r'\d\d\d',data))

Here's the Output (python re1.py):-

<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x10ec684a8>

<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x10ec684a8>

<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x10ec684a8>

I can't get the actual content which should be the names and numbers from the file.

Could you please revert with the answer?

Thanks Harmeet

1 Answer

Sabine Maennel
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Sabine Maennel
Treehouse Project Reviewer

Hello Harmeet,

to me it looks like you are using Python 2, since Python 3 gives me a better output: in Python 3, I would get for this example: 

>>>m = re.match('[\w]*', 'hello')
>>>print(m)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='hallo'>

But in Python 2 I get these other match objects, that you get. You can always look for the methods of an object by using dir: this includes the string method in python 2, so in python2 this would look like this:

>>>m = re.match('[\w]*', 'hello')
>>>dir(m)
[..., string, ... ]
>>>m.string
'hello'

just use the command line and try yourself and consider switching to python3, for which I need to just call 'python3' on my terminal instead of just 'python'.

Hope this helps, otherwise, please let me know with regards, Sabine