This is the regex I am using:
date = "1981-89"
date = re.findall(r'\d+', date)
if the date is 1981-89 this returns [1981],[89]. What do I add to the regex to ignore anything after the dash including the dash itself?
Thanks!
3 Answers
If you need to use regular expressions, use the first element of a match search:
re.match(r'(\d+)', date).group() # matching using parenthesis in regex
2 Comments
bmhkim
I agree with this. It seems to me that English Grad is asking for the first matching item, and thus should be using
match or search rather than findall.
Malik Brahimi
@bmhkim Yes I changed from
findall to match. Never really understood the difference between match and search.You can remove it with re.sub :
>>> re.sub(r'-.*','',date)
'1981'
Comments
What do I add to the regex to ignore anything after the dash including the dash itself?
You can use this regex:
date = "1981-89"
date = re.match(r'\d+(?=-)', date).group()
// 1981
(?=-) is a lookahead that makes sure we are only matching number that is followed by a hyphen.
date.partition('-')[0]would be a lot more efficient than using Regex.re.findall(r'(\d+)-', date)will work.