How to extract some piece of word from a string?

Question

I have the following string in python:

datastring = """
Animals {
    idAnimal
    nameAnimal
    animalko5854hg[name="Jazz"]
    animal6ljkjh[name="Pinky"]
    animal595s422d1252g55[name="Steven"]
    animalko5854hg[name="David"]
}
"""

print(type(datastring))#->str

My string is data than a read before from a file text, now I have that data in datastring. In datastring always in the fourth line, the data is showed in the next way: animalidAnimal[name="nameAnimal"

So I would like to code a function that takes as a parameter a string like above, and return the part of idAnimal of the first line that starts in the following way: animalidAnimal[name="nameAnimal" So for example in the first string my expected output would be:

ko5854hg

Other example:

datastring = """
Animals {
    idAnimal
    nameAnimal
    animal456jlk165ut[name="Dalty"]
    animal6ljkj[name="Moon"]

}

Expected output:

456jlk165ut

Last example:

datastring = """
Animals {
    idAnimal
    nameAnimal
    animalk45lil69lhfr5942lk[name="Jazz"]
    animal6ljkjh[name="Pinky"]
    animal595s422d1252g55[name="Steven"]
    animalko5854hg[name="David"]
    animalko5854hg[name="Oty"]
    animalko5854hg[name="Dan"]
}

Expected output:

k45lil69lhfr5942lk

I don´t want to be considered as a lazy person, but I don´t really know how to start coding that, I read about startswith and endswith functions, but those only return True/False values.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can start the match with { and use a capture group for the animalId:

{[^{}]*?\banimal(\w+)\[name="[^\s"*]*"]

The pattern matches:

• { Match a { char
• [^{}]*? Match any character except { and } as few as possible
• \banimal Match animal with a leading word boundary
• (\w+) Capture group 1, match 1+ word characters
• \[name="[^\s"*]*"] Match the `[name="...."]

Regex demo

Example code

import re

pattern = r"{[^{}]*?\banimal(\w+)\[name=\"[^\s\"*]*\"]"

s = ("Animals {\n"
            "    idAnimal\n"
            "    nameAnimal\n"
            "    animal456jlk165ut[name=\"Dalty\"]\n"
            "    animal6ljkj[name=\"Moon\"]\n\n"
            "}")

m = re.search(pattern, s)
if m:
    print(m.group(1))

Output

456jlk165ut