Regex capture phrase, plus word before and word after

Question

With Python re, I'm trying to capture a phrase, plus the word before and word after in a single return.

I.e. From the sentence...
We want to see this phrase here and then again!
Return
see this phrase here

The closest I have gotten is ...

>>> s = 'We want to see this phrase here and then again!'
>>> re.search("\w*\sthis phrase\w*\s",s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(11, 27), match='see this phrase '>

Answer 1

In your regex since you're matching \w*\s after search term it is matching 0 words and a single whitespace after your search term.

You may use this more robust regex to handle cases when your search term is at the start of a line or at the end of a line:

(?:^|\w+\s+)this phrase(?:\s+\w+|$)

RegEx Demo

RegEx Details:

• (?:^|\w+\s+): Match start position or a word followed by 1+ whitespaces
• this phrase: Match search term
• (?:\s+\w+|$): Match end position or 1+ whitespace followed by a word