Question

Using Python, I want to search for, for example, 'tune yards' in a block of text that may say 'tune-yards' (with a hyphen) and it may say 'tune yards' (without). I want both to be considered matches. I’m using the find() function. Is there a good Pythonic way to treat - and spaces as one and the same, instead of just stacking elif statements?

Something like this: (I know this doesn’t work :P)

treating '-' as ' ':
    if blockOfText.find('tune yards') > -1:
        do something

Answer 1

>>> re.search('tune[ -]yards', '58 tune yards of music')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x1ad68b8>
>>> re.search('tune[ -]yards', '35 tune-yards of trombone')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x1ad6988>

And match objects are always true (with the other possible returned value being None), so the result can be tested via if.