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I have a txt file that I converted from a pdf that contains a long list of items. These items have a numbering convention as follows:

[A-Z]{1,2}\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}

This expression would match something between:

A1.1.1

and

ZZ99.99.99

This works just fine. The issue I am having is that I am trying to capture this in group 1 and everything between each item number (the item description) in group 2.

I also need these returned as a list or an iterable so that, eventually, the contents captured can be exported to an excel spreadsheet.

This is the regex I have currently:

^([A-Z]{1,2}\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\s)([\w\W]*?)(?:\n)

Follow this link to find a sample of what I have and the issues I am facing:

Debuggex Demo

Is anyone able to help me figure out how to capture everything between each number no matter how many paragraphs?

Any input would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Jessie Boudreau
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  • I don't know Python, but i had a similar [question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46331543/use-regex-to-split-numbered-list-array-into-numbered-list-multiline) recently. And this is the [regex101 demo](https://regex101.com/r/WpiKin/3). Hope it helps – danieltakeshi Oct 10 '17 at 19:54

1 Answers1

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You are very close:

import re

s = """
A1.2.1 This is the first paragraph of the description that is being captured by the regex even if the description contains multiple lines of text.ZZ99.99.99
"""
final_data = re.findall("[A-Z]{1,2}\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}(.*?)[A-Z]{1,2}\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}", s)

Output:

[' This is the first paragraph of the description that is being captured by the regex even if the description contains multiple lines of text.']

By using (.*?) you can match any text between the letters and numbers as defined by your first regex.

Ajax1234
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