Question

I’m using this script:

import re

message = 'oh, hey there'
matches = ['hi', 'hey', 'hello']

def process(message):
    for item in matches:
        search = re.match(item, message)

    if search == None:
        return False
    return True

print process(message)

Basically, my aim is to check if any part of the message is inside any of the items in matches, however using this script, it always returns False (no match).

Could someone point out if I am doing something wrong in this code?

Answer 1

Use search rather than match. As an optimization, match only starts looking at the beginning of the string, rather than anywhere in it.

Additionally, you’re only looking at the result of the last match attempt. You should check inside of the loop and return early if any match:

for item in matches:
    if re.search(item, message):
        return True
return False

Note that if you only care about substrings and don’t need to match on regular expressions, just use the in operator:

for item in matches:
    if item in message:
        return True
return False