Using beginning regex characters in python

Question

I'm trying to implement regular expressions in python so that I will only print part of a string and not a whole string. I'm trying to print the characters that are numbers and also precede the letter characters of this string. I'm getting an error with the beginning of string character here

Heres my code import re

var = "20cw"
var2 = re.compile(^[0-9]?[0-9], var)
print var2

Here is the error I'm getting

  File "./temp.py", line 5
    var2 = re.compile(^[0-9]?[0-9], var)
                      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Expected output is

Is there anything wrong with if var[:2].isdigit(): print var[:2]. Why leap at re for this? — Rolf of Saxony
– Rolf of Saxony, Commented Jun 9, 2017 at 7:06
@RolfofSaxony Sorry, I didn't give enough examples. The number in front is 2 digits in this example, but in my program it can 1 or 2 digits — Sam
– Sam, Commented Jun 10, 2017 at 2:28

Rolf of Saxony · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-10 07:03:02Z

1

Enclose the regex as string (with quotation marks):

var2 = re.findall('^\d{2}', var)

edited Jun 10, 2017 at 7:03

Rolf of Saxony

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answered Jun 9, 2017 at 6:09

Uriel

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5 Comments

Błotosmętek Over a year ago

Even better, use raw string (r'^\d{2}') to avoid accidental interpretation of backslash character

Uriel Over a year ago

@Błotosmętek sometimes useful, but irrelevant for this case

Wiktor Stribiżew Over a year ago

The regex you suggest is different from the original one. It must be ^[0-9]{1,2} and if used with re.match, no ^ is necessary.

Błotosmętek Over a year ago

The regex is correct, from the description the OP wants to match on exactly two digits. It is OP's regex that is wrong.

Uriel Over a year ago

@WiktorStribiżew the regex OP used is not matching his requirements, I'm trying to print the first two characters of this string IF the first two characters are numbers

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