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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Email Groups

Posted by William Harrison
William Harrison
9,585 Points

My regex expression is not parsing correctly for twitter handles

Great! Now, 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.

My output, I think, is getting messed up with the email addresses. It appears to be outputting empty strings with the twitter handles.

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.]+), (?P<phone>\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4})', string)
twitters = re.search(r'(@[\d\w]+)?$', string, re.M)
William Harrison
William Harrison
9,585 Points

I found my error. I needed to remove the ? in front of the $. Everything works now.

Johannes Scribante
Johannes Scribante
19,175 Points
Johannes Scribante
Johannes Scribante
19,175 Points

Well done! Does someone perhaps know why this would give an error? Would it not just make the group optional?

1 Answer

Oszkár Fehér
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Oszkár Fehér
Treehouse Project Reviewer
Oszkár Fehér
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Oszkár Fehér
Treehouse Project Reviewer

Hi William My opinion, this is the most delicate part of python and the expressions are very precise, the best way to experiment a lot with this, as many cases possible, but this is the part what you don't need to learn word by word, it's enough to know how to look up the documentations. This line will help you to pass the quiz

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

But I also noticed that the first quiz you solved well. I hope this helps you Keep up the good work, and nice job.