Question

I am trying to use regex to parse out some lines from text read in from a file. I know this could be done by reading in the file, line-by-line, but I like the elegance in capturing all the relevant bits of info in a single regex match.

The example file contents:

---
title: a title
layout: page
---

here's some text
================

this will be blog post content.

I am trying to produce a regex match that will return 2 groups: the data in-between the “—” lines, and all of the data after the 2nd “—” line. Here is the regex string I have come up with, and I am having an issue with it:

re.match('---\n(.*?)\n---\n(.*)', content, re.S)

This seems to work well, except when dealing with unix vs windows line-endings. Is there a way to allow this regex to match a \r if it’s present, too? It works with the unix, which is just \n I believe.

Also, if you think this regex could be improved, I’m open to suggestions.

Answer 1

The sequence (\r\n|\r|\n) will match all ‘normal’ line endings (Windows, old Mac, and *nix, respectively).