Question

re.search not working.
I get an syntax error when I try to run this code:
str = 'an example word:cat!!'
match = re.search(r 'word:\w\w\w', str)
if match:
print 'found', match.group()
else:
print 'did not find'

it hangs up at the ' after the \w\w\w. I think I need to figure out how these work. thanks!

Answer 1

string type should be within double quotations right?

Answer 2

AJ, not in Python:
```
>>> s1 = 'test'
>>> s2 = "test"
>>> type(s1)
<type 'str'>
>>> type(s2)
<type 'str'>
>>>
```

Answer 3

e.mccormick's post shows what your problem appears to be: the variable name str. In Python, str is a data type, and a built in function name str(). I did your code, changing str to string and match to foo and taking that lone 'r' out of the re.search() and it ran okay.

I'd recommend using: re.search( "word: [[:alnum:]]{3}", string ) instead of the '\w' to avoid the LOCALE and UNICODE stuff.

Answer 4

Thanks, everyone!