find emails in text with python and regex

Question

I am trying to extract emails from text. I used re.search, which returned the 1. occurrence, but then I went on and used re.findall. To my surprise re.findall finds less emails than re.search. What could be the problem?

Code:

searchObj = re.search( r'[A-Za-z0-9\._+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9]+(\.|-)[A-Za-z0-9\.-]+', text)
        if searchObj:
            mail = searchObj.group()
            if mail not in emails:
                emails.add(mail)

listEmails = re.findall( r'[A-Za-z0-9\._+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9]+(\.|-)[A-Za-z0-9\.-]+', text)
        for mail in listEmails:
            if mail not in emails:
                emails.add(mail)

Wiktor Stribiżew · Answer 1 · 2016-12-28T09:12:54.943

3

Replace the capturing group (\.|-) with a non-capturing one or even with a character class:

r'[A-Za-z0-9._+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9]+[.-][A-Za-z0-9.-]+'
                               ^^^^

Or even shorter:

r'[\w.+-]+@[^\W_]+[.-][A-Za-z0-9.-]+'

Else, re.findall will only return the list of captured values.

Python demo:

import re
rx = r'[\w.+-]+@[^\W_]+[.-][A-Za-z0-9.-]+'
s = 'some@mail.com and more email@somemore-here.com'
print(re.findall(rx, s))
# => ['some@mail.com', 'email@somemore-here.com']

edited Dec 28 '16 at 09:12

answered Dec 28 '16 at 09:04

Wiktor Stribiżew

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Can you negate a group inside a character class. `[^(\d+.\d+)]`? – Mohammad Yusuf Dec 28 '16 at 09:09
No, not that way. The solution depends on what you need to achieve in the end. A [tempered greedy token](http://stackoverflow.com/a/37343088/3832970) might help. – Wiktor Stribiżew Dec 28 '16 at 09:10

find emails in text with python and regex

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