Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trialMary Yang
1,769 PointsPython Regular Expressions - Counts, Code not working.
Hi,
I'm watching the Python video covering counts in Python regular expressions and coding along with the video in workspaces. I've quadruple checked my code and even had someone else review it to see if they can find any differences between my code and Kenneth Love's code, and we can't find any differences.
The issue I'm having is that my second search is returning what it's supposed to, but my first search is just returning a blank list. If I change re.findall, to re.match, or re.search it just returns 'none'.
Can someone look over the code and tell me where I've made a mistake please?
import re
names_file = open("names.txt", encoding="utf-8")
data = names_file.read()
names_file.close()
print(re.findall(r'\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s\\d{3}-\d{4}', data))
print(re.match('\w+, \w+', data))
Edit: I should maybe add that the first search is supposed to find all phone numbers in the text document, and the second search is returning a first and last name on the first line only. Thanks!
2 Answers
Mikael Enarsson
7,056 PointsOk, I figured out. First, a comparison:
print(re.findall(r'\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s\\d{3}-\d{4}', data)) #Your code
print(re.findall(r'\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s?\d{3}-\d{4}', data)) #My code
Maybe the differences are obvious, but I'll mention them anyway:
After
\s
, you have an extra backslash, escaping the next backslash and searching for a string with a backslash in it. Fixing this makes.findall()
return some of the numbers.The reason it only returns some of the numbers is that, in it's current form, the string must have a space between the area code and the main number. You need to add a question mark before the
\s
as well.
That should fix it ^^
John Mercer
31,479 PointsA simpler solution is:
re.findall(r'\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4}', data)
In any case, it worked for me.
Mary Yang
1,769 PointsMary Yang
1,769 PointsGaaah, I don't know how I missed that like 20 times! lol, even the person I recruited to help me see what I was missing missed it.
Thank you very much for taking the time to look that over and respond. It's working now.
Mikael Enarsson
7,056 PointsMikael Enarsson
7,056 PointsNo problem ^^ It was really hard to catch. I had to try to break the string into smaller pieces and find the piece that didn't work XD