I need some help on declaring a regex. My inputs are like the following:
this is a paragraph with<[1> in between</[1> and then there are cases ... where the<[99> number ranges from 1-100</[99>.
and there are many other lines in the txt files
with<[3> such tags </[3>
The required output is:
this is a paragraph with in between and then there are cases ... where the number ranges from 1-100.
and there are many other lines in the txt files
with such tags
I've tried this:
#!/usr/bin/python
import os, sys, re, glob
for infile in glob.glob(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), '*.txt')):
for line in reader:
line2 = line.replace('<[1> ', '')
line = line2.replace('</[1> ', '')
line2 = line.replace('<[1>', '')
line = line2.replace('</[1>', '')
print line
I've also tried this (but it seems like I'm using the wrong regex syntax):
line2 = line.replace('<[*> ', '')
line = line2.replace('</[*> ', '')
line2 = line.replace('<[*>', '')
line = line2.replace('</[*>', '')
I dont want to hard-code the replace from 1 to 99.
7 Answers
This tested snippet should do it:
import re
line = re.sub(r"</?\[\d+>", "", line)
Edit: Here's a commented version explaining how it works:
line = re.sub(r"""
(?x) # Use free-spacing mode.
< # Match a literal '<'
/? # Optionally match a '/'
\[ # Match a literal '['
\d+ # Match one or more digits
> # Match a literal '>'
""", "", line)
Regexes are fun! But I would strongly recommend spending an hour or two studying the basics. For starters, you need to learn which characters are special: "metacharacters" which need to be escaped (i.e. with a backslash placed in front - and the rules are different inside and outside character classes.) There is an excellent online tutorial at: . The time you spend there will pay for itself many times over. Happy regexing!
str.replace() does fixed replacements. Use re.sub() instead.
I would go like this (regex explained in comments):
import re
# If you need to use the regex more than once it is suggested to compile it.
pattern = re.compile(r"</{0,}\[\d+>")
# <\/{0,}\[\d+>
#
# Match the character “<” literally «<»
# Match the character “/” literally «\/{0,}»
# Between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy) «{0,}»
# Match the character “[” literally «\[»
# Match a single digit 0..9 «\d+»
# Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy) «+»
# Match the character “>” literally «>»
subject = """this is a paragraph with<[1> in between</[1> and then there are cases ... where the<[99> number ranges from 1-100</[99>.
and there are many other lines in the txt files
with<[3> such tags </[3>"""
result = pattern.sub("", subject)
print(result)
If you want to learn more about regex I recomend to read Regular Expressions Cookbook by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan.
The easiest way
import re
txt='this is a paragraph with<[1> in between</[1> and then there are cases ... where the<[99> number ranges from 1-100</[99>. and there are many other lines in the txt files with<[3> such tags </[3>'
out = re.sub("(<[^>]+>)", '', txt)
print out
replace method of string objects does not accept regular expressions but only fixed strings (see documentation: ).
You have to use re module:
import re
newline= re.sub("<\/?\[[0-9]+>", "", line)
don't have to use regular expression (for your sample string)
>>> s
'this is a paragraph with<[1> in between</[1> and then there are cases ... where the<[99> number ranges from 1-100</[99>. \nand there are many other lines in the txt files\nwith<[3> such tags </[3>\n'
>>> for w in s.split(">"):
... if "<" in w:
... print w.split("<")[0]
...
this is a paragraph with
in between
and then there are cases ... where the
number ranges from 1-100
.
and there are many other lines in the txt files
with
such tags
import os, sys, re, glob
pattern = re.compile(r"\<\[\d\>")
replacementStringMatchesPattern = "<[1>"
for infile in glob.glob(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), '*.txt')):
for line in reader:
retline = pattern.sub(replacementStringMatchesPattern, "", line)
sys.stdout.write(retline)
print (retline)
