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Metacharacters in Python

Metacharacters are special characters in regular expressions that define patterns to match in strings. This document discusses the main metacharacters in Python like [], which represents a set of characters; *, which represents zero or more occurrences of a pattern; and |, which represents alternative matching characters. Examples are provided to demonstrate how each metacharacter can be used to extract specific patterns from strings using the re module in Python.

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74 views

Metacharacters in Python

Metacharacters are special characters in regular expressions that define patterns to match in strings. This document discusses the main metacharacters in Python like [], which represents a set of characters; *, which represents zero or more occurrences of a pattern; and |, which represents alternative matching characters. Examples are provided to demonstrate how each metacharacter can be used to extract specific patterns from strings using the re module in Python.

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Metacharacters in Python

Metacharacters are a very important concept of the regular expression that helps us to
solve programming tasks using the Python regex module. In this tutorial, we will learn
about the metacharacters in Python or how we can use them. We will explain each
metacharacter along with their short and simple example. The prerequisite of learning
metacharacters is that you should be familiar with the Python regular expression. If not,
visit our Python regular expression tutorial.

What are Metacharacters in Python?


Metacharacters are part of regular expression and are the special characters that
symbolize regex patterns or formats. Every character is either a metacharacter or a regular
character in a regular expression. However, metacharacters have a special meaning. They
are not used to match any patterns but to define some rules to find the specific pattern
in the statement. Metacharacters are also known as operators, signs, or symbols.

Metacharacter Description Example

[] It represents the set of characters. "[a-z]"

\ It represents the special sequence. "\r"

. It signals that any character is present at some specific place. "Ja.v."

^ It represents the pattern present at the beginning of the string. "^Java"

$ It represents the pattern present at the end of the string. "point"

* It represents zero or more occurrences of a pattern in the string. "hello*"

+ It represents one or more occurrences of a pattern in the string. "hello+"

{} The specified number of occurrences of a pattern the string. "java{2}"

| It represents either this or that character is present. "java|point"

() Capture and group (javatpoint)


[] Square Brackets Metacharacters
The [] square brackets represent the set of the characters. For example - Suppose we want
to get any occurrence of abc letters inside the target string. Or, we want to match the
words that are inside the square bracket to the target string. We can use the [abc] to
match such pattern. The [abc] will match contains any of a, b or c.

We can also specify the range of the characters using the - dash.

o [0-5] - It is same as the [012345].


o [A-E] - It is same as the [ABCDE].
o [a-d] - It is same as the [abcd].

Example -

1. import re
2. str1 = "Python is a most popular programming language. Javatpoint is best resou
rce to learn it."
3. res = re.findall(r"[jtp]", str1)
4. print(res)

Output:

['t', 't', 'p', 'p', 'p', 'J', 't', 'p', 't', 't', 't', 't']

The \ Backslash Metacharacter


The backslash is used to escape the various characters including the metacharacters. It
can also use to represent the special sequence. For example - \d is used to find the any
digit from 0-9.

Let's see another example - Suppose we want to search the match #a, where a is a
characters followed by the # special character.

Below is the table of some special characters which is used with the \.
Characters Description

\s It is used to match a one white space character.

\S It is used to match one non-white space character.

\0 It is used to match a NULL character.

\a It is used to match a bell or alarm.

\d It is used to match one decimal digit, which means from 0 to 9.

\D It is used to match any non-decimal digit.

\n It helps a user to match a new line.

\w It is used to match the alphanumeric [0-9a-zA-Z] characters.

\W It is used to match one non-word character

\b It is used to match a word boundary.

1. import re
2. str1 = "Python is a most popular programming language. Javatpoint is best resou
rce to learn it."
3. res = re.findall(r"\.", str1)
4. print(res)

Output:

['.', '.']

As we can that, it returned the list containing the two (.) dot.

The . Dot Metacharacter


The . dot metacharacter represents any string character apart from the newline character
(\n). It can consist of any letters of uppercase or lowercase, symbols such as dollar ($),
pound (#), mark (!), question mark (?) or colons (:), digits 0 to 9, including whitespace.
1. import re
2.
3. given_string = "Peter likes to \n roam on the road at night"
4. # dot(.) metacharacter to match any character
5. result_match = re.search(r'.', given_string)
6. print(result_match.group())
7.
8. # .+ to match any string except newline
9. result_match = re.search(r'.*', given_string )
10. print(result_match.group())
11.
12. given_string1 = "Peter's mobile number is - 4564\n67"
13. result_match1 = re.search(r'.+', given_string1 )
14. print(result_match1.group())

Output:

P
Peter likes to
Peter's mobile number is - 4564

The ^ Carrot Character


The carrot character returns the matching characters from beginning. For example - We
want first five words from the string, we would use the caret (^) metacharacter. Let's
understand the following example.

Example -

1. import re
2.
3. given_string = "Peter likes to \n roam on the road at night"
4. # dot(.) metacharacter to match any character
5. result_match = re.search(r'^\w{5}', given_string)
6. print(result_match.group())
Output:

Peter

In the above code, we used the \w special sequence which matches any lowercase or
uppercase, numbers, and underscore character. The five inside curly braces specify the
alphanumeric character should be occurring precisely five times.

The caret ( ^ ) to match a pattern at the beginning of each new


line
We can use the caret metacharacter only at the beginning of a string in a single line as it
is not used in multiline matching.

Example -
1. import re
2.
3. given_string = "Peter likes to \nroam on the road at night \nalso likes to eat ice-
creame"
4. # dot(.) metacharacter to match any character
5. result_match = re.search(r"^\w{5}", given_string, re.M)
6. print(result_match.group())

The $ Dollor Metacharacter


This metacharacter is just opposite to the dollor ($) metacharacter. It matches at the end
of the string. In the following example, we will match the ice-cream, which is a present at
the last of the string.

Example -
1. import re
2.
3. given_string = "Peter likes to \nroam on the road at night \nalso likes to eat ice-
cream"
4. # dot(.) metacharacter to match any character
5. result_match = re.search(r"\w{6}$", given_string, re.M)
6. print(result_match.group())
Output:

cream

The * asterisk/star Metacharacter


It is one of the most popular and widely used metacharacters in regular expression
patterns. The * asterisk represents the repetition 0 or more times as possible, meaning it
is a greedy repetition. The following example demonstrates the match of all the numbers
using the asterisk (*) metacharacter.

1. given_string = "Numbers are 1234, 8061,14567, 70453"

Observe that we need to match the two consecutive \d (represent any digit). The thing
should be remembered that at the end of the pattern means zero or more repetitions of
the preceding expression. In this case, we are preceding expression with last \d, not all
two of them. We can set the upper limit as we want. However, the lower limit is zero.

Let's understand the following example.

Example -

1. import re
2.
3. given_string = "Numbers are 1234, 8061,14567, 70453"
4. # dot(.) metacharacter to match any character
5. result_match = re.findall(r"\d\d*", given_string)
6. print(result_match)

Output:

['1234', '8061', '14567', '70453']


The + Plus Metacharacter
It is another popular and widely used metacharacter in regular expression patterns. It
represents the repetition of one or more times with as many repetitions. It means it is a
greedy repetition. In other words, there are 1 or more repetitions of the preceding
expression.

Here the pattern to be matched is \d\d+.

1. import re
2.
3. given_string = "Numbers are 5, 34, 1234, 8061,14567, 70453"
4. # dot(.) metacharacter to match any character
5. result_match = re.findall(r"\d\d+", given_string)
6. print(result_match)

Output:

['34', '1234', '8061', '14567', '70453']

The Pipe (|) Metacharacter


The pipe (|) metacharacter represents the alternative option of matching characters. Let's
understand the following example.

Example -

1. given_string = "This is my number."


2. # dot(.) metacharacter to match any character
3. result_match = re.search(r"i|n", given_string)
4. print(result_match)

Metacharacters plays a significant role in solving Python regex real-world problem, and they
come in a wide range. In this tutorial, we have included almost every metacharacters with the
proper explanation and the coding example.

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