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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Email Groups

Posted by alenwong
alenwong
4,346 Points

Extract the twitter account using regular expression with re.search()

Question: ...make a new variable, twitters that is an re.search() where the pattern catches the Twitter handle for a person. Remember to mark it as being at the end of the string. You'll also want to use the re.MULTILINE flag.

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'''

I tried replacing re.search with re.findall, and from the print(twitters) like below twitters = re.findall(''' ^[\w]+,\s[\w]+,\s [\w\d.+]+@[\w\d+.]+,\s [\d]{3}-[\d]{3}-[\d]{4},\s (.[\w]+)$ ''',string,re.X|re.M) print(twitters)

Output given in the console was ['@kennethlove', '@chalkers', '@davemcfarland', '@joykesten']

Thanks in advance

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('''
    (?P<email>[\w\d.+]+@[\w\d+.]+),\s    #Email
    (?P<phone>[\d]{3}-[\d]{3}-[\d]{4}),  #phone
''', string,re.X)

twitters = re.search('''
    ^[\w]+,\s[\w]+,\s
    [\w\d.+]+@[\w\d+.]+,\s
    [\d]{3}-[\d]{3}-[\d]{4},\s
    (.[\w]+)$
''',string,re.X|re.M)

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,744 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,744 Points

You're working to hard! You've got a very complicated regex that's anchored at both ends, but all you want in this case is just the Twitter handle from the end of the string.

Hint: the first character of a Twitter handle is always "@".

alenwong
alenwong
4,346 Points
alenwong
alenwong
4,346 Points

HI Steven

I wondered if I was expected to produce something like below?

twitters = re.search(''' (@[\w]+)$ ''', string, re.X|re.M)

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,744 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,744 Points

I expect that will pass. But you don't need the parentheses or the brackets. And since it's all on one line, you could also leave off the spaces and use normal quotes.