Python Regex returning Empty Strings instead of Results

Question

I have been experimenting with Python's Regex Module: Re.

I decided to write a simple expression that searches for links (href="url") in a file.

Here is my Regex: href *= *(\"|\').*\1

When I used a site called GSkinner, I decided to try out my expression. The results are here, along with the code.

When I decided to try it out on python regex, I used the following code:

lines = """Code found in link"""
results = re.findall(r"href *= *(\"|\').*\1", lines)
print results # Ouputs: ['"', '"'] instead of two provided links

Why are the results outputting in empty strings?

Explosion Pills · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-02 21:19:55Z

1

findall will only return what is captured (unless nothing is captured). You have to capture the value you want as well:

r"href *= *(\"|\')(.*?)\1

All together you may want to use something like:

results = [x[1] for x in re.findall(r"href *= *(\"|\')(.*?)\1", lines)]

answered Jan 2, 2014 at 21:19

Explosion Pills

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