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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Word Length

Posted by David Wright
David Wright
4,437 Points

word_length.py Please help. I think I'm close

Hello! Any advice on this would help. I'm getting the words in the list that are less than 6 still and I'm not sure why. Is this my only issue?

word_length.py 
import re

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

def find_words(count, string):
  words_list = []
  for itb in string:
    words = re.findall(r'\D*', string)
    for word in words:
      if len(word) >= count:
        return word

3 Answers

gaetano amoroso
gaetano amoroso
2,993 Points
gaetano amoroso
gaetano amoroso
2,993 Points

I just saw that I didn't answer exsatly at your question, so now I used findall for your solution

import re
def find_words(count, string):
    l = re.findall(r"\b\w{%s,}\b" % count, string) 
    new_l = []

    for word in l:
      if len(word[:len(word)]) >= count:
           new_l.append(word)
    return new_l

print(find_words(4, "dog, cat, baby, balloon, mes"))

the %s, stands for {from count, to infinite numbers}, it is the same sintax for print function when it have to farmatting a string

best regards

jcorum
jcorum
71,830 Points
jcorum
jcorum
71,830 Points

Sometimes the instructions are a bit difficult to interpret. What they want is a function more like this:

def find_words(count, data):
  return re.findall(r"\b\w{%s,}\b" % count, data)
David Wright
David Wright
4,437 Points

Okay. So what exactly does the {%s,} mean?

gaetano amoroso
gaetano amoroso
2,993 Points
gaetano amoroso
gaetano amoroso
2,993 Points

great job, you are almost.

def find_words(count, string):
    l=[]
    word_list=string.split(",")
    for word in word_list:
      if len(word) >= count:
           l.append(word)
    return l

print(find_words(4, "dog,cat,baby,balloon,me"))

Your problem was that the followingcode retrive a list with two element, the firsth is a fullstring and the second is a empty string. I believe that you want one element in list for each word in string between the commas

 words = re.findall(r'\D*', string)

I hope I was helpful

David Wright
David Wright
4,437 Points

This was helpful. Do you know a way to do it using the: re.findall() function? I was hoping to practice this.

David Wright
David Wright
4,437 Points

Also.. Is there a way to find out my output? As you did above with the print statement. I hate how I never get to see the output. I find that seeing how the output changes (even if I'm wrong) helps with the learning process.