Question

I have a string within a tag that I want to extract without finding the tag too. I tried:

string = re.search("\[tag\](.*?)\[tag\]", "[tag]string[tag]")
print(string.group(0))

and

string = re.search("/\[tag\](.*?)\[tag\]/i", "extra[tag]string[tag]extra")
print(string.group(0))

both return

[tag]string[tag]

Answer 1

.group(0) is the entire match. Use .group(1) to get the section in parentheses that you want.

import re
string = re.search("\[tag\](.*?)\[tag\]", "[tag]string[tag]")
print string.group(1) # prints 'string'

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• Python 2.7 Documentation: re.MatchObject.group