Extracting 2 strings from regular expression Python

Question

I am trying to extract city, state and/or zip code from a string using a regular expression. The regex I am using (from here get city, state or zip from a string in python) is ([^\d]+)?(\d{5})? and when I tested it on http://regex101.com/ it accurately selects the two strings I want to match.

However I'm not sure how to separate these two strings in Python. Here is what I have tried:

import re

string = "binghamton ny 13905"

reg = re.compile('([^\d]+)?(\d{5})?')
match = reg.match(string)

return match.group()

This simply returns the entire string. Is there a way to pull each match individually?

I have also tried separating the regular expression into two distinct regular expressions (one for city, state and one for zip code) however the zip code regex either returns an empty string or None. All help is appreciated, thanks.

Did you mean match.groups()?

David Robinson
– David Robinson

2014-05-14 14:55:48 +00:00
Commented May 14, 2014 at 14:55 — David Robinson
– David Robinson, Commented May 14, 2014 at 14:55
You need the second capture group: match.group(2)

devnull
– devnull

2014-05-14 14:56:13 +00:00
Commented May 14, 2014 at 14:56 — devnull
– devnull, Commented May 14, 2014 at 14:56

jonrsharpe · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-14 15:05:57Z

2

Probably the easiest way is to name the two capturing groups:

reg = re.compile('(?P<city>[^\d]+)?(?P<zip>\d{5})?')

and then access the groupdict:

>>> match = reg.match("binghamton ny 13905")
>>> match.groupdict()
{'city': 'binghamton ny ', 'zip': '13905'}

This gives you easy access to the two pieces of information by name, rather than index.

edited May 14, 2014 at 15:05

answered May 14, 2014 at 14:57

jonrsharpe

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Dan Hogan · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-14 15:05:10Z

1

I would agree with jonrsharpe

string = "binghamton ny 13905"
reg = re.compile('(?P<city>[^\d]+)?(?P<zip>\d{5})?')
result = re.match(reg, string)

Additionally you can access the variables by name like this:

result.group('city')
result.group('zip')

Python re reference page

answered May 14, 2014 at 15:05

Dan Hogan

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juankysmith · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-14 14:57:22Z

0

r = re.search("([^\d]+)?(\d{5})?")
r.groups()


(u'binghamton ny ', u'13905')

answered May 14, 2014 at 14:57

juankysmith

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1 Comment

Daniel Over a year ago

Can you please make an effort to describe what your fixed in this answer?

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