Python regex for string up to character or end of line

Question

I want a regex that stops at a certain character or end of the line. I currently have:

x = re.findall(r'Food: (.*)\|', text)

which selects anything between "Food:" and "|". For adding end of the line, I tried:

x = re.findall(r'Food: (.*)\||$', text)

but this would return empty if the text was 'Food: is great'. How do I make this regex stop at "|" or end of line?

Answer 1

You can use negation based regex [^|]* which means anything but pipe :

>>> re.findall(r'Food: ([^|]*)', 'Food: is great|foo')
['is great']
>>> re.findall(r'Food: ([^|]*)', 'Food: is great')
['is great']

Answer 2

A simpler alternative solution:

def text_selector(string)
    remove_pipe = string.split('|')[0]
    remove_food_prefix = remove_pipe.split(':')[1].strip()
    return remove_food_prefix