Lookahead & Lookbehind including markers?

Question

Is it possible to include the markers in a lookahead & lookbehind search?

Example:

str = "my cat is the best pet in the world"
re.findall('(?s)(?<=cat)(.*?)(?=pet)', str)

will return "is the best" what I want is "cat is the best pet"

thanks!

Just remove them groupings and lookarounds, `re.findall('(?s)cat.*?pet', s)` — Wiktor Stribiżew, Mar 09 '20 at 10:53
Please someone re-close this as a duplicate, there are a million more like this "match-string-between-two-strings" questions on SO. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Mar 09 '20 at 11:09

Tim Biegeleisen · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-09T11:05:04.363

0

You should just search directly for \bcat.*?pet\b and forego with lookarounds:

str = "my cat is the best pet in the world"
m = re.findall(r'\bcat.*?pet\b', str)
print(m)

This prints:

['cat is the best pet']

edited Mar 09 '20 at 11:05

answered Mar 09 '20 at 10:55

Tim Biegeleisen

You may also add word boundary after `cat` and before `pet` – Toto Mar 09 '20 at 13:42

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