Regex: match text between 2 items

Question

How would I match the code below to get two strings:

title to the third closing a tag
2nd title to the 6th closing a tag.(and so on...3rd title to the 9th closing a tag...etc)

Here is the string to be matched:

title
<a></a>
content here
<a></a>
text...
<a></a>
text...
title 
<a></a>
<a></a>
<a></a>

I tried using .* but this captured the text from the title to the last a tag.

I hope you aren't parsing HTML using regexes! http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/188 — Matthew Schinckel, Aug 04 '13 at 04:44
Is that a 6-fold nested anchor element? What the heck is this page doing? — user2357112, Aug 04 '13 at 04:49
@Matthew, the code format never changes so I don't see anything wrong with using regex to parse html in this case... — Archetype2, Aug 04 '13 at 04:49
"Never changes", until it does. I sometimes extract data from HTML using regexes, but usually it's just as easy to fire up a proper parser, and grab the bit(s) you want. — Matthew Schinckel, Aug 04 '13 at 04:51
like @MatthewSchinckel says, you could do this job much faster using something like beautifulSoup or lxml packages. — PepperoniPizza, Aug 04 '13 at 04:51
@PepperoniPizza really? I am using lxml for this project, how would that work with lxml? — Archetype2, Aug 04 '13 at 04:53

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 04 '13 at 04:54

from re import findall, DOTALL

text = '''
title
<a></a>
content here
<a></a>
text...
<a></a>
text...
title 
<a></a>
<a></a>
<a></a>
'''
print findall(r'title.*?</a>.*?</a>.*?</a>', text, DOTALL)

gives

['title\n<a></a>\ncontent here\n<a></a>\ntext...\n<a></a>', 'title \n<a></a>\n<a></a>\n<a></a>']

you can also use

print findall(r'title(?:.*?</a>){3}', text, DOTALL)

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 04 '13 at 04:41

0

Generally * is greedy, while *? is reluctant. Try replacing .* with .*?.

answered Aug 04 '13 at 04:41

Hyperboreus

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.*? will only get from title to the first that follows it – Archetype2 Aug 04 '13 at 04:47
Yes and hence you can apply it (either sequentially or nested) thrice to get your result. Also Matthew Schinckel's second comment might come in handy. – Hyperboreus Aug 04 '13 at 04:52

Regex: match text between 2 items

2 Answers2