Python Regular Expressions with Data Scraping Projects/

...

/

Greedy/Non-Greedy Matching

Greedy/Non-Greedy Matching

Python Greedy and non-greedy matching explained with examples.

We'll cover the following...

There are times when you want to match a pattern only optionally! The ? character flags the group that precedes it as an optional part of the pattern. For example, enter the following into the interactive shell:

Python
import re
Regex = re.compile(r'(scientific )?programming')
m1 = Regex.search('Learn programming')
m2 = Regex.search('Learn scientific programming')
print m1.group()
print m2.group()

The output will be:

 ...