I'm trying to convert dates in dd/mm/yy format to dd/mm/20yy format using re.sub and capture groups.
date = "25/11/20"
fixed_date = re.sub(r"(\d\d/\d\d/)(\d\d)", r"\120\2", date)
However, even though my regex seems to work on regex101.com, Python returns an imprintable character.
fixed_date
Out[42]: 'P20'
How can I get my string? In this case, it would be "25/11/2020"
Edit: date is actually a string
Do
fixed_date = re.sub(r"(\d\d\/\d\d\/)(\d\d)", r"\g<1>20\g<2>", date)
From re docs:
In string-type repl arguments, in addition to the character escapes and backreferences described above, \g<name> will use the substring matched by the group named name, as defined by the (?P<name>...) syntax. \g<number> uses the corresponding group number; \g<2> is therefore equivalent to \2, but isn’t ambiguous in a replacement such as \g<2>0. \20 would be interpreted as a reference to group 20, not a reference to group 2 followed by the literal character '0'. The backreference \g<0> substitutes in the entire substring matched by the RE.
Related
Groovy How to replace the exact match word in a String.
I wanted to replace the exact matched word in a given string in Groovy. and when i tried the below am not getting the exact matched word
def str="My Name is Richards and Richardson"
log.info(str)
str=str.replace("Richards","Praveen")
log.info("After"+str)
Output after executing the above
My Name is Richards and Richardson
AfterMy Name is Praveen and Praveenon
Am Looking for the output like : AfterMy Name is Praveen and Richardson
I tried the boundaries \b
str=str.replace("\bRichards\b","Praveen")
which is in Java and its not working. Looks \b is ba backslash escape sequence in the Groovy
can someone help
def str="My Name is Richards and Richardson"
log.info(str)
str=str.replace("Richards","Praveen")
log.info("After"+str)
expecting:AfterMy Name is Praveen and Richardson
Using boundaries (/b) will not work with String::replace because the method argument does not accept a regular expression pattern but a simple string literal.
You have two options to get the expected outcome:
Instead of using String::replace you can use String::replaceFirst. As the method name suggests it will replace only the first occurrence of the Richards substring leaving the Richardson as is.
str = str.replaceFirst("Richards", "Praveen")
Instead of using String::replace you can use String::replaceAll, in opposite to String::replace it supports regular expressions so you can use word boundaries tokens
str = str.replaceAll("\\bRichards\\b","Praveen")
Mind the double slashes!
Also, according to the String::replaceAll documentation:
Note that backslashes (\) and dollar signs ($) in the replacement string may cause the results to be different than if it were being treated as a literal replacement string; see Matcher.replaceAll. Use Matcher.quoteReplacement(java.lang.String) to suppress the special meaning of these characters, if desired.
Is there a way to replace the matched pattern substring using a single re.sub() line?.
What I would like to avoid is using a string replace method to the current re.sub() output.
Input = "/J&L/LK/Tac1_1/shareloc.pdf"
Current output using re.sub("[^0-9_]", "", input): "1_1"
Desired output in a single re.sub use: "1.1"
According to the documentation, re.sub is defined as
re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)
If repl is a function, it is called for every non-overlapping occurrence of pattern.
This said, if you pass a lambda function, you can remain the code in one line. Furthermore, remember that the matched characters can be accessed easier to an individual group by: x[0].
I removed _ from the regex to reach the desired output.
txt = "/J&L/LK/Tac1_1/shareloc.pdf"
x = re.sub("[^0-9]", lambda x: '.' if x[0] is '_' else '', txt)
print(x)
There is no way to use a string replacement pattern in Python re.sub to replace with two possible strings, as there is no conditional replacement construct support in Python re.sub. So, using a callable as the replacement argument or use other work-arounds.
It looks like you only expect one match of <DIGITS>_<DIGITS> in the input string. In this case, you can use
import re
text = "/J&L/LK/Tac1_1/shareloc.pdf"
print( re.sub(r'^.*?(\d+)_(\d+).*', r'\1.\2', text, flags=re.S) )
# => 1.1
See the Python demo. See the regex demo. Details:
^ - start of string
.*? - zero or more chars as few as possible
(\d+) - Group 1: one or more digits
_ - a _ char
(\d+) - Group 2: one or more digits
.* - zero or more chars as many as possible.
I have a string S = '02143' and a list A = ['a','b','c','d','e']. I want to replace all those digits in 'S' with their corresponding element in list A.
For example, replace 0 with A[0], 2 with A[2] and so on. Final output should be S = 'acbed'.
I tried:
S = re.sub(r'([0-9])', A[int(r'\g<1>')], S)
However this gives an error ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '\\g<1>'. I guess it is considering backreference '\g<1>' as a string. How can I solve this especially using re.sub and capture-groups, else alternatively?
The reason the re.sub(r'([0-9])',A[int(r'\g<1>')],S) does not work is that \g<1> (which is an unambiguous representation of the first backreference otherwise written as \1) backreference only works when used in the string replacement pattern. If you pass it to another method, it will "see" just \g<1> literal string, since the re module won't have any chance of evaluating it at that time. re engine only evaluates it during a match, but the A[int(r'\g<1>')] part is evaluated before the re engine attempts to find a match.
That is why it is made possible to use callback methods inside re.sub as the replacement argument: you may pass the matched group values to any external methods for advanced manipulation.
See the re documentation:
re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0)
If repl is a function, it is called for every non-overlapping
occurrence of pattern. The function takes a single match object
argument, and returns the replacement string.
Use
import re
S = '02143'
A = ['a','b','c','d','e']
print(re.sub(r'[0-9]',lambda x: A[int(x.group())],S))
See the Python demo
Note you do not need to capture the whole pattern with parentheses, you can access the whole match with x.group().
I've been trying for about two hours now to write a regular expression which matches a single character that's not preceded or followed by the same character.
This is what I've got: (\d)(?<!\1)\1(?!\1); but it doesn't seem to work! (testing at https://regex101.com/r/whnj5M/6)
For example:
In 1111223 I would expect to match the 3 at the end, since it's not preceded or followed by another 3.
In 1151223 I would expect to match the 5 in the middle, and the 3 at the end for the same reasons as above.
The end goal for this is to be able to find pairs (and only pairs) of characters in strings (e.g. to find 11 in 112223 or 44 in 123544) and I was going to try and match single isolated characters, and then add a {2} to it to find pairs, but I can't even seem to get isolated characters to match!
Any help would be much appreciated, I thought I knew RegEx pretty well!
P.S. I'm testing in JS on regex101.com because it wouldn't let me use variable length lookbacks in Python on there, and I'm using the regex library to allow for this in my actual implementation.
Your regex is close, but by using simply (\d) you are consuming characters, which prevents the other match from occurring. Instead, you can use a positive lookahead to set the capture group and then test for any occurrences of the captured digit not being surrounded by copies of itself:
(?=.*?(.))(?<!\1)\1(?!\1)
By using a lookahead you avoid consuming any characters and so the regex can match anywhere in the string.
Note that in 1151223 this returns 5, 1 and 3 because the third 1 is not adjacent to any other 1s.
Demo on regex101 (requires JS that supports variable width lookbehinds)
The pattern you tried does not match because this part (\d)(?<!\1) can not match.
It reads as:
Capture a digit in group 1. Then, on the position after that captured
digit, assert what is captured should not be on the left.
You could make the pattern work by adding for example a dot after the backreference (?<!\1.) to assert that the value before what you have just matched is not the same as group 1
Pattern
(\d)(?<!\1.)\1(?!\1)
Regex demo | Python demo
Note that you have selected ECMAscript on regex101.
Python re does not support variable width lookbehind.
To make this work in Python, you need the PyPi regex module.
Example code
import regex
pattern = r"(\d)(?<!\1.)\1(?!\1)"
test_str = ("1111223\n"
"1151223\n\n"
"112223\n"
"123544")
matches = regex.finditer(pattern, test_str)
for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1):
print(match.group())
Output
22
11
22
11
44
#Theforthbird has provided a good explanation for why your regular explanation does not match the characters of interest.
Each character matched by the following regular expression is neither preceded nor followed by the same character (including characters at the beginning and end of the string).
r'^.$|^(.)(?!\1)|(?<=(.))(?!\2)(.)(?!\3)'
Demo
Python's re regex engine performs the following operations.
^.$ match the first char if it is the only char in the line
| or
^ match beginning of line
(.) match a char in capture group 1...
(?!\1) ...that is not followed by the same character
| or
(?<=(.)) save the previous char in capture group 2...
(?!\2) ...that is not equal to the next char
(.) match a character and save to capture group 3...
(?!\3) ...that is not equal to the following char
Suppose the string were "cat".
The internal string pointer is initially at the beginning of the line.
"c" is not at the end of the line so the first part of the alternation fails and the second part is considered.
"c" is matched and saved to capture group 1.
The negative lookahead asserting that "c" is not followed by the content of capture group 1 succeeds, so "c" is matched and the internal string pointer is advanced to a position between "c" and "a".
"a" fails the first two parts of the assertion so the third part is considered.
The positive lookbehind (?<=(.)) saves the preceding character ("c") in capture group 2.
The negative lookahead (?!\2), which asserts that the next character ("a") is not equal to the content of capture group 2, succeeds. The string pointer remains just before "a".
The next character ("a") is matched and saved in capture group 3.
The negative lookahead (?!\3), which asserts that the following character ("t") does not equal the content of capture group 3, succeeds, so "a" is matched and the string pointer advances to just before "t".
The same steps are performed when evaluating "t" as were performed when evaluating "a". Here the last token ((?!\3)) succeeds, however, because no characters follow "t".
Problem: From TrajCompact, i find all the prefix and the value after prefix, using regexp, with this code:
[digits{1:2}] = ndgrid(0:4);
for k=1:25
matches(:,k)=regexp(TrajCompact(:,1),sprintf('%d%d.*',digits{1}(k),digits{2}(k)),'match','once');
end
I want only the postfix of matches, how can delete the prefix from matches?
Method using regular expressions
You can put the .* section in a group by enclosing it in parenthesis (i.e. (.*)). Matlab has some peculiar 'token' nomenclature for this. In any case, an example of how it works:
[match, group] = regexp('25blah',sprintf('%d%d(.*)',2,5),'match','once','tokens');
Then:
match would be a char array containing '25blah'
group would be a 1x1 cell array containing the string 'blah'.
That is, the variable group would hold what you're looking for.
Hack method
Since your prefix is always two digits, you could also just take everything from the 3rd character of the match onwards:
my_string = match(3:end);
other comments
You may want to require the prefix to occur at the beginning of the string by adding ^ to the beginning of your regular expression. Eg., make the line:
[match, group] = regexp('25blah',sprintf('^%d%d(.*)',2,5),'match','once','tokens');
As it is, your current regular expression would match strings like zzzzzzzzz25stuff. I'm not sure if you want that (assuming it can occur in your data).