I've got a string that I want to use regex to find the characters encapsulated between two known patterns, "Cp_6%3A" then some characters then "&" and potentially more characters, or no & and just the end of string.
My code looks like this:
def extract_id_from_ref(ref):
id = re.search("Cp\_6\%3A(.*?)(\& | $)", ref)
print(id)
But this isn't producing anything, Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
Note that (\& | $) matches either the & char and a space after it, or a space and end of string (the spaces are meaningful here!).
Use a negated character class [^&]* (zero or more chars other than &) to simplify the regex (no need for an alternation group or lazy dot matching pattern) and then access .group(1):
def extract_id_from_ref(ref):
m = re.search(r"Cp_6%3A([^&]*)", ref)
if m:
print(m.group(1))
Note that neither _ nor % are special regex metacharacters, and do not have to be escaped.
See the regex demo.
The problem is that spaces in a regex pattern, are also taken into account. Furthermore in order to add a backspace to the string, you either have to add \\ (two backslashes) or use a raw string:
So you should write:
r"Cp_6\%3A(.*?)(?:\&|$)"
If you then match with:
def extract_id_from_ref(ref):
id = re.search(r"Cp_6\%3A(.*?)(?:\&|$)", ref)
print(id)
It should work.
id.group(0)or whatever item you want. See here