capture data between a repeating string in python

Question

I want to extract all data between a repeating string

The text goes like this

map report for 0

...................
..............
lot of data in between
.....
......

map report for 1

My regex for this is

map = re.findall(r"map report for(.+?)\S*\W*map", filestring, re.S)

This only returns lines with even numbers after the search string( I presume the odd part is getting included in the preceding even iteration)

any workarounds?

Answer 1

You should consider using split instead of findall for this. It seems to be more what you've got in mind:

re.split(r'map report for \d+\n', str)

This simplifies things greatly in your case.

Answer 2

Your regex consumes the map word from even matches. You need lookahead:

map=re.findall(r"map report for(.+?)\S*\W*(?=map)",filestring,re.S)

This way it checks if your match is followed my map , but it won't be consumed .

Answer 3

The regex I would use would be something like this :

(map report for \d+)(.*?)\1

The \\1 will keep what you captured first and attempt to match it again at the end, so unlike other approach you can have map string in between.