Question

Assuming I have many strings that are like this:

<a id="1.1">
<a id="1.1.1">
<a id="1.1.2">
<a id="1.1.3">
<a id="1.2">
<a id="1.2.1">

I want to make a regular expression that catches only the ones with “#.#”, so I am trying to match it such that it ends with a double quote, but I am getting no matches.

re.compile("[1-9].[1-9]\"")

The resulting output I expect is a list containing:

  <a id="1.1">
  <a id="1.2">

What am I doing wrong? (Please suggest if there is a better way to match than the method I am using.)

Answer 1

Put double quotes on both sides: r'"\d\.\d"'.

For example,

In [109]: import re

In [110]: text = '''<a id="1.1">
<a id="1.1.1">
<a id="1.1.2">
<a id="1.1.3">
<a id="1.2">
<a id="1.2.1">'''.splitlines()

In [111]: [line for line in text if re.search(r'"\d\.\d"', line)]
Out[111]: ['<a id="1.1">', '<a id="1.2">']