I want to delete copies of 'i' in this example, tried using groups but it's not working. Where am I doing this wrong?
import re
a = '123iiii'
b = re.match('.*i(i+)', a)
print(b.group(1))
>>> i
a = re.sub(b.group(1), '', a)
print(a)
>>> 123
Desired result is '123i'.
Thanks for the answer.
Maybe,
([^i]*i)i*([^\r\n]*)
and a replacement of,
\1\2
might be OK to look into.
import re
string = '''
123iiii
123iiiiabc
123i
'''
expression = r'([^i]*i)i*([^\r\n]*)'
print(re.sub(expression, r'\1\2', string))
123i
123iabc
123i
If you wish to simplify/modify/explore the expression, it's been explained on the top right panel of regex101.com. If you'd like, you can also watch in this link, how it would match against some sample inputs.
jex.im visualizes regular expressions:
It seems that what you need is:
import re
a = '123iiii'
a = re.sub(r"i+", "i", a)
print(a)
>>> 123i
You can achieve your goal by simply using the sub function to replace a sequence of i's with a single i
import re
a = '123iiii'
a = re.sub(r'i+', 'i', a)
print(a)
The following will work even if you have the i's in multiple places in the string.
import re
s = '123iiii657iii'
re.sub('i+','i',s)
Output:
'123i675i'
