搜索模式（正则表达式）python

Question

I downloaded this tool (http://www3.telus.net/pfrank/) to rename thousands of file names (that I inherited) that has bunch of illegal characters. I am trying to find ... in any where in the file name and replace it with nothing.

I tried [...] but it only removes from the end of file name. Any suggestion ?

Answer 1

As Kash said, use \\.{3} rather than [...] . The problem is that the period is a special character in regular expressions. It means "any character". So, in order to represent a literal period, you much escape it with the backslash. \\.{3} looks for any occurances of exactly three periods in a row. \\.+ looks for any occurrence of one or more periods in a row (careful, will look for single periods). \\.\\.+ will find all instances of two or more periods in a row, which I expect is what you're looking for.

Answer 2

Use \\.+ instead of [...] .
If you are looking for specifically 3 dots, then \\.{3}