Regular Expressions

find

• The string find method can be used to get the location of one string in another

Example

sent = "Where is the word 'the'?"

print(sent.find("the"))

split

• The string split method can be used to split strings

Example

ip = "10.75.123.76"

octets = ip.split(".")

print(octets)

Regular Expressions

• Available in the re module
• Provide their own mini language for parsing strings
• Useful for somewhat advanced string processing tasks

search

• The re search method can be used to find a matching span in a string
• Will return None if no match

Example

import re

zips = "46012, 46013 46014. 46015"

if re.search("46013", zips):
    print("46013 is present")

Character Matching

• By default, regular expressions match characters literally
• Some special character can create more complex matches
• For example . will match any character

Example

import re

words = "cat dog fox pig"

if re.search(".ox", words):
    print("A word ending in ox was found")

Exercise

Create a regular expression that can match all 5 letter words that start with “c”