Python regex get (any) last word in string

Question

My goal is to get the last word of a string, no matter what the word is.

With a lot of trials and error I got kinda lucky with the following code, because instead of \w+ I tried \W+ and got a result I could work with.

But my actual code (the one you don't see here) is kinda messy, so my question is; What is the right compile regex to use to get the last word, or two words?

Thanks in advance!

import re

var = ' hello my name is eddie   '

r = re.compile(r'\S+\W+$')
r2 = r.findall(var)
print(r2)

#result ['eddie   ']

or var.strip().split(" ")[-1], and [-2:] if you need 2 words. — Liju
– Liju, Commented Sep 16, 2020 at 15:05

Ryszard Czech · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-16 21:05:18Z

2

Use

import re
var = ' hello my name is eddie   '
r_last_word = re.compile(r'\S+(?=\s*$)')
r_last_but_one = re.compile(r'\S+(?=\s+\S+\s*$)')
print(r_last_word.findall(var))
print(r_last_but_one.findall(var))

Results:

['eddie']
['is']

See proof.

\S+(?=\s*$) - one or more non-whitespace characters that may have optional whitespaces after up to the end of string.

\S+(?=\s+\S+\s*$) - one or more non-whitespace characters that may have one or more whitespace characters, one or more non-whitespace characters and then optional whitespaces after up to the end of string.

answered Sep 16, 2020 at 21:05

Ryszard Czech

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