Question

Exemple :

a = "bzzzzzz <!-- blabla --> blibli * bloblo * blublu"

I want to catch the first comment. A comment may be

(<!-- .* -->) or (\* .* \*)

That is ok :

re.search("<!--(?P<comment> .* )-->",a).group(1)

Also that :

re.search("\*(?P<comment> .* )\*",a).group(1)

But if i want one or the other in comment, i have tried something like :

re.search("(<!--(?P<comment> .* )-->|\*(?P<comment> .* )\*)",a).group(1)

But it does’t work

Thanks

Answer 1

Try conditional expression:

>>> for m in re.finditer(r"(?:(<!--)|(\*))(?P<comment> .*? )(?(1)-->)(?(2)\*)", a):
...   print m.group('comment')
...
 blabla
 bloblo