Regex : extract a 27 long char substring surrounded by ""

Question

I'm trying to extract a 27 char long substring, DpIJr_dR-DNu5kcR9RGmRprcnGU, from the following text with regex

text = '[[\"jewelry_designer\"]\n,[\"watch_store\"]\n,[\"jewelry_appraiser\"]\n,[\"leather_goods_store\"]\n]\n,null,\"DpIJr_dR-DNu5kcR9RGmRprcnGU\",null,null,null,[null]'

So far I isolated strings surrounded by \" with the following

pattern = '\\"(.*?)\\"'
output = re.findall(pattern, text)
### output => ['jewelry_designer', 'watch_store', 'jewelry_appraiser', 'leather_goods_store', 'DpIJr_dR-DNu5kcR9RGmRprcnGU']

My next step is to add a length constraint to my output, so it only matches 27 characters long substrings.

I tried \\"(.*?){27}\\" or \\"(.*?{27})\\" but not successfully. I could do [x for x in output if len(x) == 27], but it would be a shame.

Use `(.{0,27}?)` instead of `(.*?){27}` to match 0 to 27 chars but as few as possible, or, `([^"]{27})` if exactly 27 chars must match. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jun 28 '19 at 11:47
@WiktorStribiżew `(.{27}?)` did the trick in this situation — Sebastien D, Jun 28 '19 at 11:48
`(.{27}?)` = `(.{27})` and it will over match the attribute value. You must use `([^"]{27})` — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jun 28 '19 at 11:51
@WiktorStribiżew, thanks for the clarification, I should definitively improve my `regex` syntax comprehension — Sebastien D, Jun 28 '19 at 11:53

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 28 '19 at 11:48

1

Try this one:

\\\"([^\"]{27})\\\"

Demo

You first match \" with \\\", then match and capture the string you're interested in [^\"]{27} (anything but quote repeated 27 times) and then again \" with \\\"

answered Jun 28 '19 at 11:48

mrzasa

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Regex : extract a 27 long char substring surrounded by ""

1 Answers1