Question

I am fairly new to python, and really new to regex!

I am using the re module in python and trying to insert a variable into a re.compile statement.

I have a file that includes these words as test – linux windows mac –

So if I do re.compile('...u.', re.IGNORECASE) it will find linux.

But how to I put ...u. into a variable to use in the re.compile? Just assigning '...u.' to a variable and putting that in place of it in the re.compile does not seem to work.

I found on another thread something about the % character, but could not get that to work.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Could you show your code snippet for “assigning '...u.' to a variable”?

It works for me:

import re
str = 'linux windows mac'
a = re.compile('...u.',re.IGNORECASE)
a.match(str).group(0) # returns 'linux'

regex = '...u.'
b = re.compile(regex,re.IGNORECASE)
b.match(str).group(0) # returns 'linux'