Question

I have a string like:

hello #this# is #some text string# text text

I want change it to:

hello <sometag>this</sometag> is <sometag>some text string</sometag> text text

That is, replace the first # with an HTML tag and the second # with the closing tag, and so on. I am using Python; any body knows any regular expression or something other method?

Answer 1

If you want to HTML bold everything separated by hashes surrounded by whitespace, you can do this:

import regex
regex = re.compile('(\s?)#(.*?)#(\s+)')
str = 'hello #this# is #some text string# text text'
str = re.sub(regex, '\\1<b>\\2</b>\\3', str)

If you want to match without space around the hashes, you change the relevant line to these:

regex = re.compile('#(.*?)#')
re.sub(regex, '<b>\\1</b>', str)

BUT this will only match paired hashes. In your example, it would result to '<b>text</b>text text<b>text</b>text#text text'