Regex for multiple delimited items of unknown length

Question

I have a really simple set of strings:

These are the items 17, 28
These are the items 9
These are the items 5, 8, 207
I shouldn't match, but here's an arbitrary number to make things hard 14

I'm trying to create a regex that will give me the digits as a list of items:

r = re.compile(r'These are the items (?:(?P<item_numbers>\d+),?\s*)+')

I thought that wrapping the capturing group I was interested in within a non-capturing group would work, but when I match any string with multiple values (say our 17, 28 example):

input_string = 'These are the items 17, 28'
match = r.match(input_string)
match.groups()
> ('28',)

match.group('item_numbers')
> '28'

Is there a way I can do what I want with a single regex or is this a task not well suited to a regex?

`r"These are the items ((\d+,?\s?)+)"`, that will extract the numbers at the end of the line. — Error - Syntactical Remorse, Nov 26 '19 at 20:51
You could do this in two steps `if string matches "^These are the items" then use \d+ to get the digits` — MonkeyZeus, Nov 26 '19 at 20:53

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 26 '19 at 20:52

1

findall is probably what you're looking for. Try this out for size:

r = re.compile(r'(?:(?<=\D)|(?<=\A))(\d+)(?=\D|\Z)')
re.findall(r, input_string)

answered Nov 26 '19 at 20:52

Eric Le Fort

2,571
18
24

My question is definitely an unintentional dupe, but this actually works fairly well with some adjustment. Thanks – Niko Nov 26 '19 at 21:07

Regex for multiple delimited items of unknown length

1 Answers1