Given:
lst = ['(abc): my name is ?123']
I'm trying to return everything from ': ' till the end of lst[0], for that I tried a regex expression:
result = re.search(r': (.*?)', lst[0]).group(1)
It returns an empty string. How can this be done using regex correctly? Expected output :
'my name is ?123'
Resources used : Regex wiki
The issue is that you made your .* lazy by placing ? at the end. Lazy means match as little as possible, for a valid match. In this case, since your pattern does not have anything to match beyond the (.*?), the regex engine is matching empty string. Just use (.*), the non lazy version, and it will work.
lst = ['(abc): my name is ?123']
result = re.search(r': (.*)', lst[0]).group(1)
print(result)
This prints:
my name is ?123
?fromr': (.*?)'. It makes your regex stop after the first matching character.