Match single quotes from python re

Question

How to match the following i want all the names with in the single quotes

This hasn't been much that much of a twist and turn's to 'Tom','Harry' and u know who..yes its 'rock'

How to extract the name within the single quotes only

name = re.compile(r'^\'+\w+\'')

Answer 1

The following regex finds all single words enclosed in quotes:

In [6]: re.findall(r"'(\w+)'", s)
Out[6]: ['Tom', 'Harry', 'rock']

Here:

• the ' matches a single quote;
• the \w+ matches one or more word characters;
• the ' matches a single quote;
• the parentheses form a capture group: they define the part of the match that gets returned by findall().

If you only wish to find words that start with a capital letter, the regex can be modified like so:

In [7]: re.findall(r"'([A-Z]\w*)'", s)
Out[7]: ['Tom', 'Harry']

Answer 2

I'd suggest

r = re.compile(r"\B'\w+'\B")
apos = r.findall("This hasn't been much that much of a twist and turn's to 'Tom','Harry' and u know who..yes its 'rock'")

Result:

>>> apos
["'Tom'", "'Harry'", "'rock'"]

The "negative word boundaries" (\B) prevent matches like the 'n' in words like Rock'n'Roll.

Explanation:

\B  # make sure that we're not at a word boundary
'   # match a quote
\w+ # match one or more alphanumeric characters
'   # match a quote
\B  # make sure that we're not at a word boundary

Answer 3

^ ('hat' or 'caret', among other names) in regex means "start of the string" (or, given particular options, "start of a line"), which you don't care about. Omitting it makes your regex work fine:

>>> re.findall(r'\'+\w+\'', s)
["'Tom'", "'Harry'", "'rock'"]

The regexes others have suggested might be better for what you're trying to achieve, this is the minimal change to fix your problem.

Answer 4

Your regex can only match a pattern following the start of the string. Try something like: r"'([^']*)'"