regular expression for recurring digits in python

Question

I am working on to replace all digits in my data source with "numbr". Some examples are

1234-546-234235-1232-1242-123124 -> numbr
125436 -> numbr
abc1231241 -> abcnumbr

I have tried using re.sub(r'(\d+[/-]*\d+)(R?)', "numbr", token) but it is not doing replacement for example 1 properly. Any ideas of what I am missing ?

ctwheels · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-24 14:35:10Z

5

Code

See regex in use here

(?:\d-\d|\d)+

Another alternative (?:\d(?:-\d)?)+ can be used, but it takes 1 extra step to complete.

Results

Input

1234-546-234235-1232-1242-123124
125436
abc1231241

Output

numbr
numbr
abcnumbr

Explanation

(?:\d-\d|\d)+ Match either of the following one or more times
- \d-\d Match a digit, followed by a hyphen -, followed by a digit
- \d Match a digit

The reason to use (?:\d-\d|\d)+ instead of [\d-]+ is so that we don't accidentally replace valid hyphenated words such that something like my-name becomes mynumbrname or abc-1234 doesn't become abcnumbr, but instead abc-numbr

answered Nov 24, 2017 at 14:35

ctwheels

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