Introduction to

regular expressions
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON

Maria Eugenia Inzaugarat

Data Scientist
What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

Normal characters match themselves ( st )

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

Metacharacters represent types of characters ( \d , \s , \w ) or ideas ( {3,10} )

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

Metacharacters represent types of characters ( \d , \s , \w ) or ideas ( {3,10} )

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

Metacharacters represent types of characters ( \d , \s , \w ) or ideas ( {3,10} )

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

Metacharacters represent types of characters ( \d , \s , \w ) or ideas ( {3,10} )

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

Pattern: a sequence of characters that maps to words or punctuation

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

What is a regular expression?
REGular EXpression or regex:
String containing a combination of normal characters and special metacharacters that describes patterns to
nd text or positions within a text

Pattern matching usage:

Find and replace text

Validate strings

Very powerful and fast

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

The re module
import re

Find all matches of a pattern:

re.findall(r"#movies", "Love #movies! I had fun yesterday going to the #movies")

['#movies', '#movies']

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

The re module
import re

Split string at each match:

re.split(r"!", "Nice Place to eat! I'll come back! Excellent meat!")

['Nice Place to eat', " I'll come back", ' Excellent meat', '']

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

The re module
import re

Replace one or many matches with a string:

re.sub(r"yellow", "nice", "I have a yellow car and a yellow house in a yellow neighborhood")

'I have a nice car and a nice house in a nice neighborhood'

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Supported metacharacters
re.findall(r"User\d", "The winners are: User9, UserN, User8")

['User9', 'User8']

re.findall(r"User\D", "The winners are: User9, UserN, User8")

['UserN']

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

Supported metacharacters
re.findall(r"User\w", "The winners are: User9, UserN, User8")

['User9', 'UserN', 'User8']

re.findall(r"\W\d", "This skirt is on sale, only $5 today!")

['$5']

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Supported metacharacters
re.findall(r"Data\sScience", "I enjoy learning Data Science")

['Data Science']

re.sub(r"ice\Scream", "ice cream", "I really like ice-cream")

'I really like ice cream'

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

 Let's practice!
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON
 Repetitions
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON

Maria Eugenia Inzaugarat

Data Science
Repeated characters
Validate the following string:

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

Repeated characters
Validate the following string:

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

Repeated characters
Validate the following string:

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

Repeated characters
Validate the following string: import re
password = "password1234"

re.search(r"\w\w\w\w\w\w\w\w\d\d\d\d", password)

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 12), match='password1234'>

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Repeated characters
Validate the following string: import re
password = "password1234"

re.search(r"\w{8}\d{4}", password)

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 12), match='password1234'>

Quanti ers:
A metacharacter that tells the regex
engine how many times to match a
character immediately to its left.

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Quanti ers
Once or more: +

text = "Date of start: 4-3. Date of registration: 10-04."

re.findall(r" ", text)

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

Quanti ers
Once or more: +

text = "Date of start: 4-3. Date of registration: 10-04."

re.findall(r"\d+- ", text)

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

Quanti ers
Once or more: +

text = "Date of start: 4-3. Date of registration: 10-04."

re.findall(r"\d+-\d+", text)

['4-3', '10-04']

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

Quanti ers
Zero times or more: *

my_string = "The concert was amazing! @ameli!a @joh&&n @mary90"

re.findall(r"@\w+\W*\w+", my_string)

['@ameli!a', '@joh&&n', '@mary90']

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Quanti ers
Zero times or once: ?

text = "The color of this image is amazing. However, the colour blue could be brighter."

re.findall(r"colou?r", text)

['color', 'colour']

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Quanti ers
n times at least, m times at most : {n, m}

phone_number = "John: 1-966-847-3131 Michelle: 54-908-42-42424"

re.findall(r" ", phone_number)

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Quanti ers
n times at least, m times at most : {n, m}

phone_number = "John: 1-966-847-3131 Michelle: 54-908-42-42424"

re.findall(r"\d{1,2}- ", phone_number)

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Quanti ers
n times at least, m times at most : {n, m}

phone_number = "John: 1-966-847-3131 Michelle: 54-908-42-42424"

re.findall(r"\d{1,2}-\d{3}- ", phone_number)

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Quanti ers
n times at least, m times at most : {n, m}

phone_number = "John: 1-966-847-3131 Michelle: 54-908-42-42424"

re.findall(r"\d{1,2}-\d{3}-\d{2,3}-\d{4,}", phone_number)

['1-966-847-3131', '54-908-42-42424']

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Quanti ers
Immediately to the left
r"apple+" : + applies to e and not to apple

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

 Let's practice!
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON
 Regex
metacharacters
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON

Maria Eugenia Inzaugarat

Data Scientist
Looking for patterns
Two different operations to nd a match:

re.search(r"\d{4}", "4506 people attend the show re.match(r"\d{4}", "4506 people attend the show"

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 4), match='4506 <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 4), match='4506

re.search(r"\d+", "Yesterday, I saw 3 shows") print(re.match(r"\d+","Yesterday, I saw 3 shows"

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(17, 18), match='3'> None

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Special characters
Match any character (except newline): .

my_links = "Just check out this link: www.amazingpics.com. It has amazing photos!"

re.findall(r"www com", my_links)

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Special characters
Match any character (except newline): .

my_links = "Just check out this link: www.amazingpics.com. It has amazing photos!"

re.findall(r"www.+com", my_links)

['www.amazingpics.com']

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Special characters
Start of the string: ^

my_string = "the 80s music was much better that the 90s"

re.findall(r"the\s\d+s", my_string)

['the 80s', 'the 90s']

re.findall(r"^the\s\d+s", my_string)

['the 80s']

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Special characters
End of the string: $

my_string = "the 80s music hits were much better that the 90s"

re.findall(r"the\s\d+s$", my_string)

['the 90s']

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Special characters
Escape special characters: \

my_string = "I love the music of Mr.Go. However, the sound was too loud."

print(re.split(r".\s", my_string))

['', 'lov', 'th', 'musi', 'o', 'Mr.Go', 'However', 'th', 'soun', 'wa', 'to', 'loud.']

print(re.split(r"\.\s", my_string))

['I love the music of Mr.Go', 'However, the sound was too loud.']

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OR operator
Character: |

my_string = "Elephants are the world's largest land animal! I would love to see an elephant one day"

re.findall(r"Elephant|elephant", my_string)

['Elephant', 'elephant']

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OR operator
Set of characters: [ ]

my_string = "Yesterday I spent my afternoon with my friends: MaryJohn2 Clary3"

re.findall(r"[a-zA-Z]+\d", my_string)

['MaryJohn2', 'Clary3']

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OR operator
Set of characters: [ ]

my_string = "My&name&is#John Smith. I%live$in#London."

re.sub(r"[#$%&]", " ", my_string)

'My name is John Smith. I live in London.'

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OR operand
Set of characters: [ ]
^ transforms the expression to negative

my_links = "Bad website: www.99.com. Favorite site: www.hola.com"

re.findall(r"www[^0-9]+com", my_links)

['www.hola.com']

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

 Let's practice!
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON
 Greedy vs. non-
greedy matching
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON

Maria Eugenia Inzaugarat

Data Scientist
Greedy vs. non-greedy matching
Two types of matching methods:
Greedy

Non-greedy or lazy

Standard quanti ers are greedy by default: * , + , ? , {num, num}

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Greedy matching
Greedy: match as many characters as possible

Return the longest match

import re
re.match(r"\d+", "12345bcada")

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='12345'>

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Greedy matching
Backtracks when too many character matched

Gives up characters one at a time

import re
re.match(r".*hello", "xhelloxxxxxx")

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='xhello'>

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Non-greedy matching
Lazy: match as few characters as needed

Returns the shortest match

Append ? to greedy quanti ers

import re
re.match(r"\d+?", "12345bcada")

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 1), match='1'>

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Non-greedy matching
Backtracks when too few characters matched

Expands characters one a time

import re
re.match(r".*?hello", "xhelloxxxxxx")

<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='xhello'>

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN PYTHON

 Let's practice!
REGULAR EX P RES S ION S IN P YTH ON