python regex sub not working due to escape sequence

Question

I have this kind of text. -> Roberto is an insurance agent who sells two types of policies: a $$\$$50,000$$ policy and a $$\$$100,000$$ policy. Last month, his goal was to sell at least 57 insurance policies. While he did not meet his goal, the total value of the policies he sold was over $$\$$3,000,000$$. Which of the following systems of inequalities describes $$x$$, the possible number of $$\$$50,000$$ policies, and $$y$$, the possible number of $$\$$100,000$$ policies, that Roberto sold last month?

I want to replace expressions containing dollar signs such as $$\$$50,000$$. Removing things such as $$y$$ worked out quite well, but the expressions that contain escape sequence doesn't work well.

This is the code I used.

re.sub("$$\$$.*?$$", "", text)

This didn't work, and I found out that \ is a escape str, so should be written as \. So I replaced the expression as below.

re.sub("$$\\$$.*?$$", "", text)

However, this again didn't work. What am I doing wrong ? Thanks a lot in advance ...

Grismar · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-19 01:21:06Z

2

The character $ is a regex metacharacter, and so will need to be escaped if intended to refer to a literal $:

text = """Roberto is an insurance agent who sells two types of policies: a $$\$$50,000$$ policy and a $$\$$100,000$$ policy. Last month, his goal was to sell at least 57 insurance policies. While he did not meet his goal, the total value of the policies he sold was over $$\$$3,000,000$$. Which of the following systems of inequalities describes $$x$$, the possible number of $$\$$50,000$$ policies, and $$y$$, the possible number of $$\$$100,000$$ policies, that Roberto sold last month?"""
output = re.sub(r'\$\$(?:\\\$\$)?.*?\$\$', '', text)
print(output)

The above pattern makes the \$$ optional, to cover all cases.

edited Nov 19, 2019 at 1:21

Grismar

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answered Nov 19, 2019 at 1:18

Tim Biegeleisen

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