Python REGEX match string and print

findall gives you a list of all matches in the string. You are seeing exactly that - a list with the one match it found.

Try search instead: http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#re.search which returns a MatchGroup that you can get the first group of: http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#match-objects

Or you could do findall and use the first entry in the list to print (e.g. match[0]).

In your code, match is a list of strings resulting from the re.findall function ( [1]: http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html). In this list, all matches are returned in the order found. In your case, the list only has one element, i.e. match[0].

It's simple:

In[1]: import re

In[2]: mydata = 'hash=49836EC32432A9B830BECFD66A9B6F936327EAE8'

In[3]: re.findall(".*hash=([A-F0-9]+).*",mydata)
Out[3]: ['49836EC32432A9B830BECFD66A9B6F936327EAE8'] # a list

In[4]: re.match(".*hash=([A-F0-9]+).*",mydata)
Out[4]: <_sre.SRE_Match at 0x5d79020>

In[5]: re.match(".*hash=([A-F0-9]+).*",mydata).groups()
Out[5]: ('49836EC32432A9B830BECFD66A9B6F936327EAE8',) # a tuple

In[6]: match = Out[3]

In[7]: print "Hash:",match[0] # so print the first item!!!
Hash: 49836EC32432A9B830BECFD66A9B6F936327EAE8

So in short, change the print line to:

if match:
    print "Hash: %s" % match[0] # only first element!!

It looks like it is not counting the value of match as a string. I don't have "mydata", but when I save hash as a string it prints out fine. It looks like you something there is not cast as a string, and I think it's the value of match. The quotes are indicating this has been cast as a string, I believe. Do type() to see what it is cast as, or try typing str(match) instead of match after your print statement.

Edit:

Someone else noted that it is returning an array value. Do match[0] to return the first value of the array.