Question

If I have a string like this:

*select 65* description

How could I extract the bit after the asterisk and the number using regex in Python? I need something that would yield select and 65 from the above string.

All of them follow this convention:

*[lowercase specifier] [integer]* description

Answer 1

You could use this regular expression:

^\*([a-z]+)\s+([0-9]+)\*

In Python, you can match regular expressions with the re module. Thus:

import re

my_string = """*select 65* description"""
match = re.match(r"^\*([a-z]+)\s+([0-9]+)\*", my_string)
specifier = match.group(1)
integer = int(match.group(2))