On Jun 11, 2:01 am, Lie Ryan <lie.1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 504cr...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I've encountered a problem with my RegEx learning curve -- how to
> > escape hash characters # in strings being matched, e.g.:
>
> >>>> string = re.escape('123#abc456')
> >>>> match = re.match('\d+', string)
> >>>> print match
>
> > <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x00A6A800>
> >>>> print match.group()
>
> > 123
>
> > The correct result should be:
>
> > 123456
>
> > I've tried to escape the hash symbol in the match string without
> > result.
>
> > Any ideas? Is the answer something I overlooked in my lurching Python
> > schooling?
>
> As you're not being clear on what you wanted, I'm just guessing this is
> what you wanted:
>
> >>> s = '123#abc456'
> >>> re.match('\d+', re.sub('#\D+', '', s)).group()
> '123456'
> >>> s = '123#this is a comment and is ignored456'
> >>> re.match('\d+', re.sub('#\D+', '', s)).group()
>
> '123456'Sorry I wasn't more clear. I positively appreciate your reply. It provides half of what I'm hoping to learn. The hash character is actually a desirable hook to identify a data entity in a scraping routine I'm developing, but not a character I want in the scrubbed data. In my application, the hash makes a string of alphanumeric characters unique from other alphanumeric strings. The strings I'm looking for are actually manually-entered identifiers, but a real machine-created identifier shouldn't contain that hash character. The correct pattern should be 'A1234509', but is instead often merely entered as '#12345' when the first character, representing an alphabet sequence for the month, and the last two characters, representing a two-digit year, can be assumed. Identifying the hash character in a RegEx match is a way of trapping the string and transforming it into its correct machine- generated form. I'm surprised it's been so difficult to find an example of the hash character in a RegEx string -- for exactly this type of situation, since it's so common in the real world that people want to put a pound symbol in front of a number. Thanks! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
