re.findall() does not return all characters

Question

I have pattern like this (finding 3 word abbreviations)

s='([A-Z][a-z]+ ){2,4}\([A-Z]{2,4}\)'

and I want to find

line='National Health Service (NHS)'
p=re.findall(s,line)

but p is only ['Service '] and not the whole string. Why?

Why do you want the whole string? It's the same as not doing anything it all. — João Silva, Sep 19 '12 at 14:01

Martijn Pieters · Answer 1 · 2012-09-19T14:04:49.730

4

You are not grouping the match correctly, use this instead:

s='(?:[A-Z][a-z]+ ){2,4}\([A-Z]{2,4}\)'

.findall() returns the whole match, unless you define capturing groups ((...)), at which point it'll return the results contained in the group instead. The above pattern uses a non-capturing group instead ((?:...)). Since that leaves your expression without any capturing groups, .findall() returns full matches again.

edited Sep 19 '12 at 14:04

answered Sep 19 '12 at 13:53

Martijn Pieters

1,048,767
296
4,058
3,343

1

This is correct, but it would be helpful to explain why. – Steven Rumbalski Sep 19 '12 at 14:00
@StevenRumbalski: yeah, sorry, was out of time there for a bit. – Martijn Pieters Sep 19 '12 at 14:05

re.findall() does not return all characters

1 Answers1