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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Email Groups

emails.py challenge task 2. Why am I not getting a regex search object?

Looking at a few examples and still not getting a solution.

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})\t
''',string,re.M)

twitters = re.search(r'(?P<twitter>@[\w\d]+)$',string,re.MULTILINE) 

1 Answer

Andy Hughes
Andy Hughes
8,478 Points

Jake Williams - I know regex is a real pain to get right especially when TeamTreeHouse challenges can be very picky in pass requirements. Rather than trying to explain what I changed in your code, I've given you my code below that passes the challenge.

A couple of key bits.

  1. You needed to include re.X and re.MULTILINE can be abbr to re.M and they should be separated by a pipe |.
  2. Your \t should be \s which is whitespace rather than tab.
  3. For twitter, you need to add [^t] which looks for the @ after a tab space. (I tried it with s for whitespace but the challenge failed).
  4. Other than that, it was a couple of little expression changes, as shown below.

Just understand that regex can be a trial and error minefield. :)

contacts = re.search(r'''
    (?P<email>[-\w\d.+]+@[-\w\d.]+),\s
    (?P<phone>\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4}),\s
''',string,re.X|re.M)

twitters = re.search(r'''
    (?P<twitter>@[^t][\w\d]+)
''',string ,re.X|re.M)