I'm learning Python from No Starches book on Python Automate the Boring Stuff. For a project we write a script to scrape the phone numbers from the text on the clipboard.
I'm getting an error (shown below). What did I do wrong and how can I fix it?
My code:
import re
# Phone number regex
phoneRegex = re.compile(r'''(
(\d{3}|\(\d{3}\))? #area code
(\s|-|\.)? #seperator
(\d{3}\) #first 3 digits
(\s|-|\.) #seperator
(\d{4}) #last 4 digits
(\s*(ext|x|ext.)\s*(\d{2,5}))? #extension
)''', re.VERBOSE)
The error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "*path snipped for privacy*/Automate the Boring Stuff with Python/Chapter 7 project phoneAndEmail.py", line 7, in <module>
phoneRegex = re.compile(r'''(
File "/Applications/Mu Editor.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python3.8/re.py", line 252, in compile
return _compile(pattern, flags)
File "/Applications/Mu Editor.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python3.8/re.py", line 304, in _compile
p = sre_compile.compile(pattern, flags)
File "/Applications/Mu Editor.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python3.8/sre_compile.py", line 764, in compile
p = sre_parse.parse(p, flags)
File "/Applications/Mu Editor.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python3.8/sre_parse.py", line 948, in parse
p = _parse_sub(source, state, flags & SRE_FLAG_VERBOSE, 0)
File "/Applications/Mu Editor.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python3.8/sre_parse.py", line 443, in _parse_sub
itemsappend(_parse(source, state, verbose, nested + 1,
File "/Applications/Mu Editor.app/Contents/Resources/Python/lib/python3.8/sre_parse.py", line 836, in _parse
raise source.error("missing ), unterminated subpattern",
re.error: missing ), unterminated subpattern at position 0 (line 1, column 1)
The mistake is in this part of the phoneRegex pattern:
(\d{3}\)
The opening ( is the beginning of a group, but the closing ) was escaped with a \, making it a literal ) instead of the end of the group.
Thus, the opening ( of the group is never balanced by a closing ) (i.e., the group, a subpattern, is "unterminated").
You should change \) to ).