Welcome to the Treehouse Community

The Treehouse Community is a meeting place for developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels to get support. Collaborate here on code errors or bugs that you need feedback on, or asking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project. Join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today. (Note: Only Treehouse students can comment or ask questions, but non-students are welcome to browse our conversations.)

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and a supportive community. Start your free trial today.

Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Email Groups

Topher Knoll
Topher Knoll
3,572 Points
Posted by Topher Knoll
Topher Knoll
3,572 Points

Bummer: Didn't get a regex search object.

Why doesn't this produce anything???

emails.py 
import re

string = '''Love, Kenneth, kenneth+challenge@teamtreehouse.com, 555-555-5555, @kennethlove
Chalkley, Andrew, andrew@teamtreehouse.co.uk, 555-555-5556, @chalkers
McFarland, Dave, dave.mcfarland@teamtreehouse.com, 555-555-5557, @davemcfarland
Kesten, Joy, joy@teamtreehouse.com, 555-555-5558, @joykesten'''

contacts = re.search(r'''
    ^(?P<email>[-\w\d+.]+@[-\w\d.]+[^, ])\t
    (?P<phone>\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4})?$
''', string, re.X|re.I)

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
210,869 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
210,869 Points

At first glance, three issues stand out.

  • the "^" and "$" anchor the patterns to the beginning and end of the string, but that's not where they are
  • the comma in between is not accounted for
  • the \t only matches a tab, use \s instead to match any spacing character