Python regex outputting multiple matches

Question

I have the following example text:

60CC
60 cc
60cc2
60CC(2)

and the following regex to match these instances:

(60\s?(cc)(\w|\(.\)){0,5})

however my output is as follows for the first match:

['60CC', 'CC', None]

(Demo of the sample regex & data.)

how do I limit the output to just the first item?

I am using Python Regex. the snippet of my python code is:

re.findall("(60\s?(cc)(\w|\(.\)){0,5})", text, flags=re.IGNORECASE)

lets start with clarifications. What exactly do you need? if you want the first one, why just not use "60CC" as regex? — Superluminal, Mar 05 '20 at 13:03
Note that when you repeat the capturing group, the value of the third group for this string `60CC(2)(3)(4)` would be `(4)` and not `(2)(3)(4)` — The fourth bird, Mar 05 '20 at 13:04
You are getting `None` because of `{0,...}` which allows an empty string. — Jan, Mar 05 '20 at 13:05

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '20 at 13:08

2

how do I limit the output to just #1 ?

You can just ignore the irrelevant groups from your findall/finditer results.

Alternatively, use non-capturing groups for the bits you don't care about: just add ?: after the leading parenthesis, this way you can still use grouping features (e.g. alternation) without the group being captured (split out) in the result.

answered Mar 05 '20 at 13:08

Masklinn

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thank you this does the trick! - I have used the non-capturing groups method – qbbq Mar 05 '20 at 13:11

Python regex outputting multiple matches

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