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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Word Length

find_words causing problems

My code won't work why?

word_length.py
import re

# EXAMPLE:
# >>> find_words(4, "dog, cat, baby, balloon, me")
# ['baby', 'balloon']

def find_words(count, string):
    return re.findall(r'\w*{count}', string)

2 Answers

Idan Melamed
Idan Melamed
16,285 Points

Hi Paul, you are really (really) close!

When you write re.findall(r'\w*{count}', string), it actually tries to check if there is 1 or 0 alphabet characters (that's the \w* part) and if it finds one, it continues to look for '{count}'. Because it doesn't find any word in the list which is made of 0 or 1 characters followed by {count}, it returns an empty list.

Here's my solution:

def find_words(count, string):
    return re.findall(r'\w' * count + '+', string)

Multiply '\w' by count, to find words that are equal in length to count, then add a '+' to also find words with more than count letters.

I just thought of another solution:

def find_words(count, my_str):
    return re.findall(r'\w{%d,}' % count, my_str)

'\w{num,}' is like saying look for at least num straight \w

Hope this helps, Idan.

Thank you Idan