return date string using regex

Question

I am trying to return the date from a longer string. The date could be any weekday, any number with a subscript st, nd, rd, th and the month as 3 string values (Jan, Feb etc).

This is my attempt but I'm getting None. Not sure what I'm missing?

string = 'Times for Saturday 10th Aug'

days = ('Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday')
months = ('Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec')
pat = re.compile(r'^(%s) (\d+)(st|nd|rd|th) (%s)$' %
                 ('|'.join(days), '|'.join(months)))

print(re.match(pat, string))

^ means the start of line. What happens when you remove that? — Selcuk
– Selcuk, Commented Oct 11, 2019 at 0:49

wjandrea · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-11 00:50:23Z

1

A caret ^ in a regex and re.match both start matching at the start of the string. Simply remove the caret and use re.search instead.

pat = re.compile(r'(%s) (\d+)(st|nd|rd|th) (%s)$' %
                 ('|'.join(days), '|'.join(months)))

print(re.search(pat, string))

answered Oct 11, 2019 at 0:50

wjandrea

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3 Comments

jonboy Over a year ago

Thanks @wjandrea. I want to pass the date string to another call function. It's returning <re.Match object; span=(88, 105), match='Saturday 10th Aug'>. I'm only after Saturday 10th Aug

wjandrea Over a year ago

@jonboy See How do I return a string from a regex match in python?

jonboy Over a year ago

Cheers. Thanks @wjandrea

lenik · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-11 01:49:47Z

1

You should remove the beginning of line character ^ and the end of the line character $, then everything works just fine:

>>> re.findall(r'(%s) (\d+)(st|nd|rd|th) (%s)' %
...                  ('|'.join(days), '|'.join(months)), string)
[('Saturday', '10', 'th', 'Aug')]

And, please, don't call variable string -- it's already used in python.

answered Oct 11, 2019 at 1:49

lenik

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