Python regex for float dash float

Question

if i want to find every odds which has the following format - ( 1.64 - 2.38), how do i code regex?

 <td class="t-odds">
       1.64 - 2.38                 
      </td>

 re.findall(r'bets/.+?/.+?">(.+?)</a>',Tennis)

Incomplete code. I failed to find an anchor tag. What's the value of variable `Tennis`? — Avinash Raj, Aug 10 '15 at 16:06
You look like you're trying to use regex to parse HTML - don't. Use an HTML parser! — jonrsharpe, Aug 10 '15 at 16:08
This problem becomes much more difficult if you want to match the representation of _all_ possible floats, such as `1e-10` and `nan` — Kevin, Aug 10 '15 at 16:12
[People have gone insane](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/103081) over parsing HTML with regex code. — Paul, Aug 11 '15 at 06:54
I can't tell what the format is from this snippet. Is the td class name always "t-odds"? Could the odds be displayed as plain text instead of a table cell? The currently posted `re.findall` call doesn't provide any hints of what you want to do, either, though it should. The title says "float dash float" but there is no dash in the `re.findall` — Paul, Aug 11 '15 at 06:58

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 11 '15 at 07:40

What you are looking for is probably this regex: (\d+\.\d+)\s\-\s(\d+.\d+)

But honestly, as @jonrsharpe and others have suggested in comments, what you should do is use an HTML parser. Not only is it safer, it is easier.

You can try a live demo of my regex here, on Regex101.com.

1 Answers1