Regular expressions (regex) are a powerful tool for pattern matching and text manipulation in Python. They allow you to search, match, and manipulate text with incredible precision and flexibility.
In this article, we’ll explore how to leverage regular expressions across various Python libraries and frameworks, providing you with practical examples and insights to enhance your coding skills.
Regex in the Standard Library
Python’s standard library includes the re module, which provides a comprehensive set of functions for working with regular expressions. Let's start by exploring some basic examples:
import re
# Matching a pattern
text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
pattern = r"\b\w+\b"
matches = re.findall(pattern, text)
print(matches) # Output: ['The', 'quick', 'brown', 'fox', 'jumps', 'over', 'the', 'lazy', 'dog']
# Replacing a pattern
text = "I love Python, it's the best language!"
new_text = re.sub(r"Python", "JavaScript", text)
print(new_text) # Output: "I love JavaScript, it's the best language!"