Question

I want to be able to replace the spaces between the city and the number with a comma, but the line I came up with (and variations of it) seem to obliterate the string.

>>> temp = re.sub(r"(\w+).*?(\d+)", ",", string)

where string is like:

Toronto 239495
Cape Town 34567

How can I do this?

I’m still picking up regex, so any explanations with any code would be really great.

Answer 1

You’re replacing the right matches, but only with a comma! The other parts of the match get replaced too. You could use assertions, or just stick them back in:

temp = re.sub(r"(\w+).*?(\d+)", r"\1,\2", string)

However, the \w+ will only match the Cape in Cape Town. How about:

temp = re.sub(r"(.+?)\s*(\d+)", r"\1,\2", string)