Regular Expressions: 100+ Tips and Strategies for Effective Text Pattern Matching in Python

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Regular expressions (regex or regexp) in Python are powerful tools for pattern matching and text manipulation. They provide a concise and flexible syntax for describing patterns in strings. Let’s go through the basics and more advanced features of regular expressions in Python.

I. Features:

1. Introduction to Regular Expressions:

A regular expression is a sequence of characters that defines a search pattern. It’s a versatile tool used for string matching and manipulation. In Python, the re module provides support for regular expressions.

import re

2. Basic Patterns:

2.1 Literal Characters:

pattern = re.compile(r'hello')
result = pattern.match('hello world')
print(result.group())  # Output: 'hello'

2.2 Character Classes:

pattern = re.compile(r'[aeiou]')
result = pattern.findall('hello world')
print(result)  # Output: ['e', 'o', 'o']

2.3 Wildcard .:

pattern = re.compile(r'he..o')
result = pattern.match('hello world')
print(result.group())  # Output: 'hello'