RegEx to match end of string

Question

I am looking to match e-mail addresses in a text document for which I am writing a regex. I have come up with something like this for starters -

((?:[a-zA-Z]+[\w+\.\-]+[\-a-zA-Z]+))[ ]*((?:@|at))[ ]*(?:[a-zA-Z\.]+)

I want to make sure that the end of the e-mail address is a 'edu' or 'com'. How do I do this? I am using Python.

Some sample e-mail addresses from my text document

alice @ so.edu
alice at sm.so.edu
alice @ sm.com

Edit -

I want to make a change to this regex ONLY. My regex fits a few other examples in my data.

wrongusername · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-25T04:55:03.033

2

((?:[a-zA-Z]+[\w+\.\-]+[\-a-zA-Z]+))[ ]*((?:@|at))[ ]*(?:[a-zA-Z\.]+)\.(com|edu)

EDIT: For a "dot" instead of ".":

((?:[a-zA-Z]+[\w+\.\-]+[\-a-zA-Z]+))[ ]*((?:@|at))[ ]*(?:[a-zA-Z\.]+) *(\.|dot) *(com|edu)

edited Mar 25 '12 at 04:55

answered Mar 24 '12 at 23:04

wrongusername

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Why is the '$' not needed? Because - (?:[a-zA-Z\.]+)\. gets through the whole domain/sub-domain thing right? Just want to confirm if I have understood it correctly. – Dexter Mar 24 '12 at 23:06
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@mcenly Hm, I don't see a `$` in your regex or mine. A `$` would match only e-mail addresses at the end of a line. That may or may not be what you want. In your sample document with only one e-mail per line, I don't think it matters at all, but in a text document with e-mails sprawled throughout, a `$` would cause only those e-mails at the end of a line to be matched. – wrongusername Mar 24 '12 at 23:08
by end of line you mean \n right and not end of string? Sorry to bother you on this. – Dexter Mar 24 '12 at 23:10
@mcenley Yes, that's what I meant! – wrongusername Mar 24 '12 at 23:11
I also have e-mails of the pattern 'alice @ bob dot com' in my dataset. The mentioned regex won't work then right? – Dexter Mar 24 '12 at 23:14

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

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First of all, see this answer for explanation of how to match all valid e-mail addresses as per RFC822.

I would personally not modify the regular expression, but use email.Utils.parseaddr() on the regexp matches instead and check that the resulting string .endswith("edu") or .endswith("com"). E.g.

>>> email.Utils.parseaddr("kimvais@mailinator.com")[1].endswith(".com")
True

edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

Community

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answered Mar 24 '12 at 23:02

Kimvais

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Would it not work if he has spaces and `at` instead of `@` in his e-mail addresses? – wrongusername Mar 24 '12 at 23:05
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@Kimvais I can't - reason being there are complex ways people have written their e-mail addresses to avoid spam. – Dexter Mar 24 '12 at 23:09
@mcenley - fair enough. However, please note that there is a _huge_ amount of e-mail addresses that do __not__ end with `.edu` or `.com` – Kimvais Mar 24 '12 at 23:12
@Kimvais I have a list of TLDs with me. – Dexter Mar 24 '12 at 23:12

RegEx to match end of string

2 Answers2