Question

Say I have a string like {{ComputersRule}} and a regex like: [^\}]+. How would I get regular expressions to start at a specified point in the string, i.e. Once it has reached the third character in the string. If it’s relevant, and I doubt it is, I’m working in Python version 2.7.3. Thank you.

Answer 1

I’d recommend using Python to grab the substring from the third character onwards, and then apply the regex to the rest.

Otherwise, you could just use the regex . (any character except newline) to gobble up the first n characters:

^.{3}([^\}]+)

Notice the ^.{3} which forces the [^\}]+ to not include the first three characters of the string (the ^ anchors to the start of the string/line). The brackets capture the bit you want to extract (so get capturing group 1).

In your particular case, if it’s just a case of “I want the text inside the {{ and }}” you could do \{\{([^\}]+)\}\} or [^\{\}]+.