Non-greedy regex not matching as expected

Question

Given the following string as input:

[2015/06/09 14:21:59] mod=syn|cli=192.168.1.99/49244|srv=192.168.1.100/80|subj=cli|os=Windows 7 or 8|dist=0|params=none|raw_sig=4:128+0:0:1460:8192,8:mss,nop,ws,nop,nop,sok:df,id+:0

I'm trying to match the value of subj , ie: in the above case the expected output would be cli

I don't understand why my regex is not working:

subj = re.match(r"(.*)subj=(.*?)|(.*)", line).group(2)

From what I can tell, the second group in here should be cli but I'm getting an empty result.

Answer 1

The | has special meaning in regex (Which creates alternations ) , hence escape it as

>> re.match(r"(.*)subj=(.*?)\|", line).group(2)
'cli'

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Another Solution

You can use re.search() so that you can get rid of the groups at the start of subj and that after the |

Example

>>> re.search(r"subj=(.*?)\|", line).group(1)
'cli'

Here we use group(1) since there is only one group that is being captured instead of three as in previous version.

• Read about the differences between search and match

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Complex version

You can even get rid of all the capturing if you are using look arounds

>>> re.search(r"(?<=subj=).*?(?=\|)", line).group(0)
'cli'

• (?<=subj=) Checks if the string matched by .*? is preceded by subj .

• .*? Matches anything, non greedy matching.

• (?=\\|) Check if this anything is followed by a | .

Answer 2

You need to escape | .. Use the following:

subj = re.match(r"(.*)subj=(.*?)\|(.*)", line).group(2)
                                ^

Answer 3

Regex101

I'd recommend using the following regex, because it will provide better performance with two additions/substitutions:

• adding the beginning of line character ^
• adding the negating group [^\\|]* is faster than (.*)?

Code

subj = re.match(r"^.*\|subj=([^\|]*)", line).group(1)

regex:

^.*\|subj=([^\|]*)

Debuggex Demo

Answer 4

The pipe sign | needs to be escaped, like so:

subj = re.match(r"(.*)subj=(.*?)\\|(.*)", s).group(2)

Answer 5

I would use a negated class [^|]* with re.search for better performance:

import re
p = re.compile(r'^(.*)subj=([^|]*)\|(.*)$')
test_str = "[2015/06/09 14:21:59] mod=syn|cli=192.168.1.99/49244|srv=192.168.1.100/80|subj=cli|os=Windows 7 or 8|dist=0|params=none|raw_sig=4:128+0:0:1460:8192,8:mss,nop,ws,nop,nop,sok:df,id+:0"
print re.search(p, test_str).group(2)

See IDEONE demo

Note I am not using both lazy and greedy quantifiers in the regex (it is not advisable usually).

The pipe symbol must be escaped to be treated as a literal | symbol.

REGEX EXPLANATION :

• ^ - Start of string
• (.*) - The first capturing group that matches characters from the beginning up to
• subj= - A literal string subj=
• ([^|]*) - The second capturing group matching any characters other than a literal pipe (inside a character class, it does not need escaping)
• \\| - A literal pipe (must be escaped)
• (.*) - The third capturing group (if you need to get the string after up to the end.
• $ - End of string