Regex match following substring in string python

Question

I've come up with a regex expression that works well enough for my purposes for finding phone numbers.

I would like to take it a step further and use it in large text blocks to identify matching strings that follow the words 'cell' or 'mobile' by at most 10 characters. I would like it to return the number in Cell Phone: (954) 555-4444 as well as Mobile 555-777-9999 but not Fax: (555) 444-6666

something like (in pseudocode)

regex = re.compile(r'(\+?[2-9]\d{2}\)?[ -]?\d{3}[ -]?\d{4})')
bigstring = # Some giant string added together from many globbed files
matches = regex.search(bigstring)
for match in matches:
    if match follows 'cell' or match follows 'mobile':
        print match.group(0)

are you just trying to ignore the fax numbers?

Julien Spronck
– Julien Spronck

2015-03-25 18:48:43 +00:00
Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 18:48 — Julien Spronck
– Julien Spronck, Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 18:48

dawg · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-25 18:51:10Z

1

You can do:

txt='''\
Call me on my mobile anytime: 555-666-1212 
The office is best at 555-222-3333 
Dont ever call me at 555-666-2345 '''

import re

print re.findall(r'(?:(mobile|office).{0,15}(\+?[2-9]\d{2}\)?[ -]?\d{3}[ -]?\d{4}))', txt)

Prints:

[('mobile', '555-666-1212'), ('office', '555-222-3333')]

answered Mar 25, 2015 at 18:51

dawg

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2 Comments

Julien Spronck Over a year ago

this solution does not even work for the provided example Cell Phone: (954) 555-4444 ... not because of the word Cell but because it does not match the first parenthesis

dawg Over a year ago

Yes. You can put whatever inside the first capture group. Play with it here

Julien Spronck · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-25 18:39:40Z

0

You can do that with your regular expression. In the re documentation, you will find that the pattern r'(?<=abc)def' matches 'def' only if it is preceded by 'abc'.

Similarly r'Hello (?=World)' matches 'Hello ' if followed by 'World'

answered Mar 25, 2015 at 18:39

Julien Spronck

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2 Comments

Xodarap777 Over a year ago

I added that it needs to be able to match even if there are intermediate words or symbols - will this work for that?

Julien Spronck Over a year ago

it can work but you will have to adapt your regex a bit

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