Regex, find first - Python

Question

i="<wx._controls.Button; proxy of <Swig Object of type 'wxButton *' at 0x2887828> >]], [[[41, 183], 'Button', <wx._controls.Button; proxy of <Swig Object of type 'wxButton *' at 0x28879d0> >]]]"

m = re.findall("<wx.(.*)> >", i)

will give me

["<wx._controls.Button; proxy of <Swig Object of type 'wxButton *' at 0x2887828> >]], [[[41, 183], 'Button', <wx._controls.Button; proxy of <Swig Object of type 'wxButton *' at 0x28879d0> >"]

However I want it to give me,

["<wx._controls.Button; proxy of <Swig Object of type 'wxButton *' at 0x2887828> >","<wx._controls.Button; proxy of <Swig Object of type 'wxButton *' at 0x28879d0> >"]

The regex is searching all the way until the end, I would like to take all the parts out that match the regex, Does anyone know a solution to this?

have you tried (.*?) instead of (.*) it will do a lazy search — Adriano Bacha
– Adriano Bacha, Commented May 31, 2012 at 20:40

Niklas B. · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-31 20:46:15Z

7

the * operator is greedy by default. You can change this by adding a ? after it. Also remember to quote the literal dot.

I also made the group non-matching, otherwise you wouldn't get the desired output (this seems to be a problem with your original code as well):

re.findall(r"<wx\.(?:.*?)> >", i)

Another possiblity would be the following (assuming that exactly one < character comes before the first >), which is faster than the version with the lazy * operator:

re.findall(r"<wx\.[^<]*<[^<]*> >", i)

edited May 31, 2012 at 20:46

answered May 31, 2012 at 20:39

Niklas B.

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