python regex: get name of named group

Question

I have something like this:

$ pattern = re.compile('(?P<group1>AAA|BBB|CCC)|(?P<group2>DDD|EEE|FFF)')

If I'm looking at a match object I'm not really interested which specific text was matched, I just want to know if it was group1 or group2

groupdict() gives me something like this:

$ match.groupdict()
$ {'group1': None, 'group2': 'DDD'}

Now, of course, I could find out that it's group2 by just iterating over the dict, but that seems slow if I have a lot of matches to check. Is there a more direct way to get the group name? (Python 2.7)

DSM · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-08 21:12:44Z

11

Maybe lastgroup?

>>> pattern = re.compile('(?P<group1>AAA|BBB|CCC)|(?P<group2>DDD|EEE|FFF)')
>>> m = pattern.search("AAA")
>>> m.lastgroup
'group1'
>>> m = pattern.search("DDD")
>>> m.lastgroup
'group2'

answered May 8, 2014 at 21:12

DSM

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1 Comment

Eulelie Over a year ago

Well, I feel a bit sheepish about my question now, the answer looks just to easy x) Thanks!

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