I have the following string:
ref:_00D30jPy._50038vQl5C:ref
And would like to formalize the following output string:
5003800000vQl5C
The required regex actions are:
I initially made the following regex to match the whole string: (ref:(\S+):ref)
How can I alter the Python RegEx to achieve the above?
Use re.sub:
import re
s = 'ref:_00D30jPy._50038vQl5C:ref'
result = re.sub(r'^[^5]*(5.{4})(.*?):ref$', r'\g<1>00000\g<2>', s, 0, re.MULTILINE)
print(result)
Output:
5003800000vQl5C
Explanation:
^[^5]*: match characters except 5 from the beginning(5.{4}): capture the first 5 characters to group 1(.*?):ref$: capture the remaining to group 2 except the :ref at the end\g<1>00000\g<2>: replace the whole line with \g<1>00000\g<2> where \g<1> and \g<2> are substituted by group 1 and 2 repsectively.Demo has a Python 2-compatible code generator and detailed explanation.
regex is not required for this task. It can be achieved more simply using string slicing.
If the input strings maintain the same format and lengths you can simply do this:
s = 'ref:_00D30jPy._50038vQl5C:ref'
new = '{}00000{}'.format(s[15:20], s[20:-4])
If there is some variability then search for the first '5' in the string and slice from there:
start = s.index('5')
new = '{}00000{}'.format(s[start:start+5], s[start+5:-4])
