Capturing only specific sections/patterns of string with Regex

Question

I have the following strings, which always follow a standard format:

'On 10/31/2018, Sally Brown picked 25 apples at the orchard.'
'On 11/01/2018, John Smith picked 12 peaches at the orchard.'
'On 09/15/2018, Jim Roe picked 10 pears at the orchard.'

I want to extract certain data fields into a series of lists:

['10/31/2018','Sally Brown','25','apples']
['11/01/2018','John Smith','12','peaches']
['09/15/2018','Jim Roe','10','pears']

As you can see, I need some of the sentence structure to be recognized, but not captured, so the program has context for where the data is located. The Regex that I thought would work is:

(?<=On\s)\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4},\s(?=[A-Z][a-z]+\s[A-Z][a-z]+)\s.+?(?=\d+)\s(?=[a-z]+)\sat\sthe\sorchard\.

But of course, that is incorrect somehow.

This may be a simple question for someone, but I'm having trouble finding the answer. Thanks in advance, and someday when I'm more skilled I'll pay it forward on here.

Do you just need anything starting with data and the number after that? — Ashok KS, Oct 31 '18 at 04:33
Really not a whole lot of information to go off of, but a start: `u\w+?\\\(.*?)\\\` [Live](https://regex101.com/r/HGOTeT/1) — K.Dᴀᴠɪs, Oct 31 '18 at 04:33
Well, I'm using data1 and data2 as stand-ins for the actual data (because the actual string I want to analyze is huge). But basically, I need the "\u0025" items to recognized by Regex, but not captured by it (because they are the only markers that indicate where the data fields are). I want a Regex that says "Ah, here's a pattern, data comes next," then grabs that data. — Alex Heebs, Oct 31 '18 at 04:42
OP, I'd like to refer you to the following meta post: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/285733/should-give-me-a-regex-that-does-x-questions-be-closed — Mad Physicist, Oct 31 '18 at 04:42
I'm not asking for someone to build me a Regex. But I'm having trouble finding an answer to what concept would apply to a "pattern.for.refference-data.to.capture-pattern.for.refference-data.to.capture" type string. — Alex Heebs, Oct 31 '18 at 04:46
I'm not clear on what you *are* asking then. Would you mind updating your question to include what you expect as an answer? — Mad Physicist, Oct 31 '18 at 06:22
Ok. I thought of a much simpler way to present, so I'll change. — Alex Heebs, Oct 31 '18 at 06:23
And in response to your comment about not having read the docs, I highly recommend that you do. More than the documentation of the re module, which is excellent, you may want to check out the howto intro: https://docs.python.org/3/howto/regex.html — Mad Physicist, Oct 31 '18 at 06:25
Question modified – hope it's better now. Thanks for the feedback. — Alex Heebs, Oct 31 '18 at 06:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 31 '18 at 10:13

use \w+ to match any word or [a-zA-Z0-9_]

import re

str = ''''On 10/31/2018, Sally Brown picked 25 apples at the orchard.'
'On 11/01/2018, John Smith picked 12 peaches at the orchard.'
'On 09/15/2018, Jim Roe picked 10 pears at the orchard.'''

arr = re.findall('On\s(.*?),\s(\w+\s\w+)\s\w+\s(\d+)\s(\w+)', str)
print arr

# [('10/31/2018', 'Sally Brown', '25', 'apples'),
# ('11/01/2018', 'John Smith', '12', 'peaches'),
# ('09/15/2018', 'Jim Roe', '10', 'pears')]

Capturing only specific sections/patterns of string with Regex

1 Answers1