Question

I’ve got the string:

<u>40 -04-11</u>

How do I remove the spaces and hyphens so it returns 400411?

Currently I’ve got this:

(<u[^>]*>)(\-\s)(<\/u>)

But I can’t figure out why it isn’t working. Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

(<u[^>]*>)(\-\s)(<\/u>)

Your pattern above doesn’t tell your regex where to expect numbers.

(<u[^>]*>)(?:-|\s|(\d+))*(<\/u>)

That should get you started, but not being a python guy, I can’t give you the exact replacement syntax. Just be aware that the digits are in a repeating capture group.

Edit: This is an edit in response to your comment. Like I said, not a python guy, but this will probably do what you need if you hold your tongue just right.

def repl(matchobj):
        if matchobj.group(1) is None:
            return ''
        else:
            return matchobj.group(1)

source = '<u>40 -04-11</u>40 -04-11<u>40 -04-11</u>40 -04-11'
print re.sub(r'(?:\-|\s|(\d+))(?=[^><]*?<\/u>)', repl, source)

Results in:

>>>'<u>400411</u>40 -04-11<u>400411</u>40 -04-11'

If the above offends the Python deities, I promise to sacrifice the next PHP developer I come across. 🙂