Python regular expression quoted string

Question

I have the following string:

str1 = "I am doing 'very well' for your info"

and I want to extract the part between the single quotes i.e. very well

How am I supposed to set my regular expression?

I tried the following but obviously it will give wrong result

import re
pt = re.compile(r'\'*\'')
m = pt.findall(str1)

Thanks

Ajax1234 · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-21T04:00:06.417

4

You can use re.findall to capture the group between the single quotes:

import re
str1 = "I am doing 'very well' for your info"
data = re.findall("'(.*?)'", str1)[0]

Output:

'very well'

edited Jan 21 '18 at 04:00

answered Jan 21 '18 at 03:47

Ajax1234

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Do you not need to print(data) in python? Does re.findall print results automatically? – Chase Taylor Jan 21 '18 at 07:40
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@ChaseTaylor by convention on SO, Python users do not generally include the `print` statement for reasons of code length. – Ajax1234 Jan 21 '18 at 12:48

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 21 '18 at 03:54

3

Another way to solve the problem with re.findall: find all sequences that begin and end with a quote, but do not contain a quote.

re.findall("'([^']*)'", str1)

answered Jan 21 '18 at 03:54

DYZ

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 21 '18 at 03:47

2

You need to place a word character and a space between the escaped single quotes.

import re
pt = re.compile(r"'([\w ]*'")
m = pt.findall(str1)

answered Jan 21 '18 at 03:47

James

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Chase Taylor · Answer 4 · 2018-01-21T07:37:53.660

2

Is using regular expressions entirely necessary for your case? It often is but sometimes regular expressions just complicate simple string operations.

If not, you can use Python's native Split function to split the string into a list using ' as the divider and access that part of the array it creates.

str1 = "I am doing 'very well' for your info"
str2 = str1.split("'")
print(str2[1]) # should print: very well

edited Jan 21 '18 at 07:37

answered Jan 21 '18 at 03:49

Chase Taylor

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The string provided is a very simple example of what I want to achieve – mrt Jan 21 '18 at 03:53
1

You should have provided a more realistic example, then. – DYZ Jan 21 '18 at 03:56
Then I suppose you will want to use regex's after all. I tried. :D – Chase Taylor Jan 21 '18 at 03:56

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 22 '18 at 15:37

0

try this

   import re
    pattern=r"'(\w.+)?'"
    str1 = "I am doing 'very well' for your info"
    print(re.findall(pattern,str1))

output:

['very well']

answered Jan 22 '18 at 15:37

Python regular expression quoted string

5 Answers5