Simple Filter Python script for Text

Question

I am trying to create what must be a simple filter function which runs a regex against a text file and returns all words containing that particular regex.

so for example if i wanted to find all words that contained "abc", and I had the list: abcde , bce , xyz and zyxabc the script would return abcde and zyxabc .

I have a script below however I am not sure if it is just the regex I am failing at or not. it just returns abc twice rather than the full word. thanks.

import re

text = open("test.txt", "r")
regex = re.compile(r'(abc)')

for line in text:
    target = regex.findall(line)
    for word in target:
        print word

Answer 1

I think you dont need regex for such task you can simply split your lines to create a list of words then loop over your words list and use in operator :

 with open("test.txt") as f :
     for line in f:
         for w in line.split():
              if 'abc' in w :
                   print w 

Answer 2

Your methodology is correct however, you can change your Regex to r'.*abc.*' , in the sense

 regex = re.compile(r'.*abc.*')

This will match all the lines with abc in them The wildcards .*` will match all your letters in the line.

A small Demo with that particular line changed would print

abcde
zyxabc

Note, As Kasra mentions it is better to use in operator in such cases