Question

What’s the easiest way of me converting the simpler regex format that most users are used to into the correct re python regex string?

As an example, I need to convert this:

string = '*abc+de?' 

to this:

string = '.*abc.+de.?' 

Of course I could loop through the string and build up another string character by character, but that’s surely an inefficient way of doing this?

Answer 1

Those don’t look like regexps you’re trying to translate, they look more like unix shell globs. Python has a module for doing this already. It doesn’t know about the ‘+’ syntax you used, but neither does my shell, and I think the syntax is nonstandard.

>>> import fnmatch >>> fnmatch.fnmatch('fooabcdef', '*abcde?') True >>> help(fnmatch.fnmatch) Help on function fnmatch in module fnmatch:  fnmatch(name, pat)     Test whether FILENAME matches PATTERN.      Patterns are Unix shell style:      *       matches everything     ?       matches any single character     [seq]   matches any character in seq     [!seq]  matches any char not in seq      An initial period in FILENAME is not special.     Both FILENAME and PATTERN are first case-normalized     if the operating system requires it.     If you don't want this, use fnmatchcase(FILENAME, PATTERN).  >>>