[ale] Python regex

[JK]

Christopher Fowler wrote:
> I'm in the process of converting a Perl module to a Python equivalent so
> it can be used in Python programs.  I'm not exactly a pro with Python.
> I may need a bit of help.
> 
> One thing I love about Perl is regular expression support.
> I'm not sure how I can do the same in Python.  The issue here is that 
> I connect to a master database to get a connection string for an 
> organizational database.  I now need to connect to that database.
> Below is the string that comes from the connect_string column: 
> 
> jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1/AC_DEMO
> 
> In Perl I might do the following to extract what I need:
> 
> connection_string =~ m/mysql:\/\/(.+?)/\(.+?)$/;
> $host = $1
> $db = $2
> 
> Can someone tell me how I can do the equivalent in Python?

http://docs.python.org/lib/module-re.html

Briefly:

  data="Somewhere in this string is something I want."

  import re

  regex="some.*[Ii]"
  match=re.search(regex,data)
  print match.group(0)
  # Prints "something I"

Further details in the referenced URL. You can, for example,
precompile REs for performance, start searching at a
particular location, etc.  It is slightly more verbose
than Perl, but equally flexible (I believe the same
underlying RE lib is used in both cases).

-- JK