Extracting all the relevant portions of the string text with start and end matches by using regular expressions in Python

Question

I've already posted a similar question regarding the text extraction in Python with regular expressions, but I have another issue with non-greedy quantifiers, so I am asking a question with a little bit different example. The issue is I need to extract all the relevant portions of the string text by using regular expressions in Python with two specific matches. To be specific, here is an example text:

example = """
    The Bank does offer a hybrid loan. Hybrid loans are loans that start as a 
    fixed rate mortgage but after a set number of years automatically adjust 
    to an adjustable rate mortgage. The Bank offers a three year fixed rate mortgage 
    after which the interest rate will adjust annually. Item 1. Business 3-13 Item 1a. 
    Risk Factors 13-15 Item 1b. Unresolved Staff Comments 15 Item 2. Properties 15-16
    The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this report,
    and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements 
    or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected 
    in the forward-looking statements. PART 1. ITEM 1. BUSINESS 
    General Farmers & Merchants Bancorp, Inc. (Company) is a bank holding company 
    incorporated under the laws of Ohio in 1985 and elected to become a financial 
    holding company under the Federal Reserve in 2014. Our primary subsidiary, 
    The Farmers & Merchants State Bank (Bank) is a\n community bank operating 
    in Northwest Ohio since 1897.ITEM 2. PROPERTIES Our principal office is located in Archbold, Ohio.
    The Bank operates from the facilities at 307 North Defiance Street. 
    In addition, the Bank owns the property from 200 to 208 Ditto Street, 
    Archbold, Ohio, which it uses for Bank parking and a community mini-park area.
    """

, and and I would like to extract the 'between' portions of the text starting from a start match 'ITEM 1.' and an end match 'ITEM 2.', so the final results should look like this:

final_result_1 = """
    ITEM 1. BUSINESS 
    General Farmers & Merchants Bancorp, Inc. (Company) is a bank holding company 
    incorporated under the laws of Ohio in 1985 and elected to become a financial 
    holding company under the Federal Reserve in 2014. Our primary subsidiary, 
    The Farmers & Merchants State Bank (Bank) is a\n community bank operating 
    in Northwest Ohio since 1897.
    """

final_result_2 = """
    Item 1. Business 3-13 Item 1a. 
    Risk Factors 13-15 Item 1b. Unresolved Staff Comments 15
    """

The order of the final results should be in terms of the length of final result text, so the 'final_result_1' is the longest text portion out of two, and the 'final_result_2' is the shortest one. You could refer to the answers to the previous question here. Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

I believe you need to use

import re;
example = """
    The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this report,
    and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements 
    or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected 
    in the forward-looking statements. PART 1. ITEM 1. BUSINESS 
    General Farmers & Merchants Bancorp, Inc. (Company) is a bank holding company 
    incorporated under the laws of Ohio in 1985 and elected to become a financial 
    holding company under the Federal Reserve in 2014. Our primary subsidiary, 
    The Farmers & Merchants State Bank (Bank) is a community bank operating 
    in Northwest Ohio since 1897.ITEM 2. PROPERTIES Our principal office is located in Archbold, Ohio.
    The Bank operates from the facilities at 307 North Defiance Street. 
    In addition, the Bank owns the property from 200 to 208 Ditto Street, 
    Archbold, Ohio, which it uses for Bank parking and a community mini-park area.
"""
matches = re.findall('(ITEM\ 1[\s\S]*)ITEM\ 2', example,re.IGNORECASE);
#Here, matches consists of all the matches in a list. You can sort them by size of string at each index of the list.
matches.sort(key = len, reverse = True)
#Now matches contains a list of the matched strings in reverse order of length (from bigger to smaller)

EDIT: (Not what OP wants)

import re;
example = """
    The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this report,
    and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements 
    or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected 
    in the forward-looking statements. PART 1. ITEM 1. BUSINESS 
    General Farmers & Merchants Bancorp, Inc. (Company) is a bank holding company 
    incorporated under the laws of Ohio in 1985 and elected to become a financial 
    holding company under the Federal Reserve in 2014. Our primary subsidiary, 
    The Farmers & Merchants State Bank (Bank) is a community bank operating 
    in Northwest Ohio since 1897.ITEM 2. PROPERTIES Our principal office is located in Archbold, Ohio.
    The Bank operates from the facilities at 307 North Defiance Street. 
    In addition, the Bank owns the property from 200 to 208 Ditto Street, 
    Archbold, Ohio, which it uses for Bank parking and a community mini-park area.
"""
pat = re.compile('(ITEM\ 1[\s\S]*)ITEM\ 2',re.IGNORECASE);
matches = pat.findall(example)
print(matches)
#Here, matches consists of all the matches in a list. You can sort them by size of string at each index of the list.
matches.sort(key = len, reverse = True)
#Now matches contains a list of the matched strings in reverse order of length (from bigger to smaller)
print(matches)

Code tested

FINAL EDIT:

import re;
example = """
    The Bank does offer a hybrid loan. Hybrid loans are loans that start as a 
    fixed rate mortgage but after a set number of years automatically adjust 
    to an adjustable rate mortgage. The Bank offers a three year fixed rate mortgage 
    after which the interest rate will adjust annually. Item 1. Business 3-13 Item 1a. 
    Risk Factors 13-15 Item 1b. Unresolved Staff Comments 15 Item 2. Properties 15-16
    The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this report,
    and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements 
    or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected 
    in the forward-looking statements. PART 1. ITEM 1. BUSINESS 
    General Farmers & Merchants Bancorp, Inc. (Company) is a bank holding company 
    incorporated under the laws of Ohio in 1985 and elected to become a financial 
    holding company under the Federal Reserve in 2014. Our primary subsidiary, 
    The Farmers & Merchants State Bank (Bank) is a\n community bank operating 
    in Northwest Ohio since 1897.ITEM 2. PROPERTIES Our principal office is located in Archbold, Ohio.
    The Bank operates from the facilities at 307 North Defiance Street. 
    In addition, the Bank owns the property from 200 to 208 Ditto Street, 
    Archbold, Ohio, which it uses for Bank parking and a community mini-park area.
"""
pat = re.compile('(ITEM\ 1[\s\S]*?)ITEM\ 2',re.IGNORECASE);
matches = pat.findall(example)
print(matches)
#Here, matches consists of all the matches in a list. You can sort them by size of string at each index of the list.
matches.sort(key = len, reverse = True)
#Now matches contains a list of the matched strings in reverse order of length (from bigger to smaller)

#To check if it works:
for match in matches:
    print(match)
    print('\n')

Why don't you try it now? :)