Question

I want to extract any string after 'user=' from the string '/?user=hello&user=man&user='. In this case that would get me 'hello', 'man' and ''.

I’m stuck here:

>>> import re

>>> s = '/?user=hello&user=man&user='
>>> re.findall("user=(.*)",s)
['hello&user=man&user=']

I would be able to find what I want if the last occurence of user= also ended with &, but does anybody know how to find ['hello', 'man', ''] in this string?

Answer 1

I would drop the re and use the tools meant for this:

from urlparse import urlsplit, parse_qs

s = '/?user=hello&user=man&user='
parse_qs(urlsplit(s).query, keep_blank_values=True)
{'user': ['hello', 'man', '']}