NameError: name 're' is not defined

Question

I am very new to python. Very new. I copied the following from a tutorial

#!/usr/bin/python

from urllib import urlopen
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

webpage = urlopen('http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/LatestNews').read

patFinderTitle = re.compile('<title>(.*)</title>')

patFinderLink = re.compile('<link rel.*href="(.*)"/>')

findPatTitle = re.findall(patFinderTitle,webpage)

findPatLink = re.findall(patFinderLink,webpage)

listIterator = []
listIterator[:] = range(2,16)

for i in listIterator:
    print findPatTitle[i]
    print findPatLink[i]
    print "\n"

I get the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 8, in <module>
    patFinderTitle = re.compile('<title>(.*)</title>')
NameError: name 're' is not defined

What am I doing wrong?

Which tutorial did you copy this from? It is littered with errors. — johnsyweb, Sep 19 '11 at 01:40
Then you should compare your code with the accompanying code here: http://www.newthinktank.com/2010/11/python-2-7-tutorial-pt-13-website-scraping/ . After a little tidy-up I've found that it works. — johnsyweb, Sep 19 '11 at 01:57
I rolled back your edit to the question because chameleon questions are not acceptable. You can't just invalidate the efforts of the people who posted answers to your original question like that. — Aran-Fey, Sep 21 '18 at 12:34

score 61 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 19 '11 at 01:20

61

You need to import regular expression module in your code

import re
re.compile('<title>(.*)</title>')

answered Sep 19 '11 at 01:20

TheOneTeam

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thanks. I now get another error..please see my edits – user_78361084 Sep 19 '11 at 01:24
3

@user522962 `webpage = urlopen('http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/LatestNews').read` should be `webpage = urlopen('http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/LatestNews').read()` – razpeitia Sep 19 '11 at 01:56

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 21 '18 at 12:37

2

As well as the missing import re, your program has another error. In

webpage = urlopen('http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/LatestNews').read

You left the () off after read at the end of the line. So currently webpage is a reference to the .read method, it's not the result of the .read() call.

edited Sep 21 '18 at 12:37

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answered Sep 19 '11 at 02:24

John La Rooy

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NameError: name 're' is not defined

2 Answers2