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pythonregexpython-3.xregex-group

Python regex outputting multiple matches

I have the following example text:

60CC
60 cc
60cc2
60CC(2)

and the following regex to match these instances:

(60\s?(cc)(\w|\(.\)){0,5})

however my output is as follows for the first match:

['60CC', 'CC', None]

(Demo of the sample regex & data.)

how do I limit the output to just the first item?

I am using Python Regex. the snippet of my python code is:

re.findall("(60\s?(cc)(\w|\(.\)){0,5})", text, flags=re.IGNORECASE)
Solution

  • how do I limit the output to just #1 ?

    You can just ignore the irrelevant groups from your findall/finditer results.

    Alternatively, use non-capturing groups for the bits you don't care about: just add ?: after the leading parenthesis, this way you can still use grouping features (e.g. alternation) without the group being captured (split out) in the result.