How to search for a specific line in multi line and store value in a variable

Question

I have stored output of the command chage -l user in variable output and need to check if user account password is not expired or will expire within 90 days.

import re

output = '''Last password change                                    : Aug 26, 2017
Password expires                                        : never
Password inactive                                       : never
Account expires                                         : never
Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
'''

regexp = re.compile(r'Password expires [ ]*(:*?)')
match = regexp.match(output)
if match:
    VALUE = match.group(2)

Now, I need to store the value in a variable to proceed forward but not able to do it. Above is my code. Ideally VALUE should have "never".

Answer 1

re.match will not look for the pattern throughout the string, but will rather match for it right at the start of the string (as if the regex started with ^). So you need re.search, which will check for the pattern throughout the target string:

import re
output = '''Last password change                                    : Aug 26, 2017
Password expires                                        : never
Password inactive                                       : never
Account expires                                         : never
Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
'''

regexp = re.compile(r'Password expires\s+: (.*)')
match = regexp.search(output)
if match:
    VALUE = match.group(1)
    print(VALUE)