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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Name Groups

Nathan McElwain
Nathan McElwain
4,575 Points

Not sure what I did wrong

The challenge is: "Create a variable names that is an re.match() against string. The pattern should provide two groups, one for a last name match and one for a first name match. The name parts are separated by a comma and a space." I did what I thought would work, but keep getting 'first' and 'last' backwards. I haven't had a problem with regex until this.

names.py
import re

string = 'Perotto, Pier Giorgio'

names = re.match(r'([\w]*)([,\w ]*)',string, re.I)

2 Answers

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points

You are very close. The comma and space are not part of the names so they should be outside of the group parens. I used \s for the space:

names = re.match(r'([\w]*),\s([\w ]*)',string, re.I)
Nathan McElwain
Nathan McElwain
4,575 Points

oh wow, derp! I must've done every single combination of things EXCEPT that! Thank you.

Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points

Actually the asterisk should be a plus sign. The asterisk means zero or more of the character set the + means one or more. I think you need the one or more variety.

Nathan McElwain
Nathan McElwain
4,575 Points

Still works either way, but yea, technically it should probably be a '+' since you NEED to return 1 or more.