Question

when I try to extract this video ID (AIiMa2Fe-ZQ) with a regex expression, I can’t get the dash an all the letters after.

>>> id = re.search('(?<=\?v\=)\w+', 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIiMa2Fe-ZQ')
>>> print id.group(0)
>>> AIiMa2Fe

Answer 1

I don’t know the pattern for youtube hashes, but just include the “-” in the possibilities as it is not considered an alpha:

import re
id = re.search('(?<=\?v\=)[\w-]+', 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIiMa2Fe-ZQ')
print id.group(0)

I have edited the above because as it turns out:

>>> re.search("[\w|-]", "|").group(0)
'|'

The “|” in the character definition does not act as a special character but does indeed match the “|” pipe. My apologies.