Another RegEx Question...

[andrea.gavana]

Hello NG,

I'm quite new to Python and I don't know if this is a FAQ (I can't
find it) or an obvious question. I'm using the RE module in python, and I
would like to be able to contruct something like the Window$ "Find Files Or
Folders" engine. As the Window$ users know, you can filter the file names
using the character "*", as:

myfilen* (Will find a file named myfilenames)
*yf*nam* (Will find a file named myfilenames)

I have tried something like:

import re
mystring = "*yf*nam*"
mystring.replace("*","\w+")
php = re.compile(mystring + "\w+")

But it does not work...

Is there a way to let the user of my application use the "*" character and
to do a Regular Expression search inside a Python code?

Thank you for every suggestion.

Andrea.

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[Roel Schroeven]

an***********@agip.it wrote:

Hello NG,

I'm quite new to Python and I don't know if this is a FAQ (I can't
find it) or an obvious question. I'm using the RE module in python, and I
would like to be able to contruct something like the Window$ "Find Files Or
Folders" engine. As the Window$ users know, you can filter the file names
using the character "*", as:

myfilen* (Will find a file named myfilenames)
*yf*nam* (Will find a file named myfilenames)

I have tried something like:

import re
mystring = "*yf*nam*"
mystring.replace("*","\w+")
php = re.compile(mystring + "\w+")

But it does not work...

replace doesn't change the string in place (it can't, since strings are
immutable in Python); rather it returns a new string. You could, for
example, do something like

mystring = mystring.replace("*","\w+")

Note 1: I'm not sure of the meaning of '*' in Windows file wildcards,
but I think it would be more correct to translate it into '\w*' (i.e.
zero or more instead of one or more) or even '.*' (any character, not
only alphanumeric; will also match spaces etc. that might appear in
filenames).

Note 2: Instead of translating to regular expressions, it would probably
be easier to use the fnmatch and/or glob module. They use Unix
shell-style wildcards, which I believe are very similar to Windows style
wildcards, if not identical.

--
"Codito ergo sum"
Roel Schroeven