Regular expression search string with parentheses as part of string to detect in python

Question

I have a regular expression that I'm iterating over a large number of search terms that I don't control. Is there a way to detect special characters and treat them as part of the search rather than as regular expression terms?

Edit I clarified the question

searchTerms = ['ThisIsMySearchString(LSB)', 'OtherSearchTerm']
list = ['ThisIsMySearchString(LSB)OtherStuffInString', 'OtherStringsToSearch']

for item in searchTerms:
    if (re.search(item, list, re.I)):
        print('found item')

Answer 1

You can escape the ( in your regex to make it treat it not as a special character but rather one to match. so:

re.search('ThisIsMySearchString(LSB)', list, re.I)

becomes

re.search('ThisIsMySearchString\(LSB\)', list, re.I)

In general, you use \\ to escape the special character, like . which becomes \\. if you want to search on it.

Update

OK, now with new information, I would try to use Python's powerful batteries included features to find your terms. Something like:

searchTerms = ['ThisIsMySearchString(LSB)', 'OtherSearchTerm']
list = ['ThisIsMySearchString(LSB)OtherStuffInString', 'OtherStringsToSearch']

for term in searchTerms:
    for item in list:
        if term in item:
            print(f'Found {term} in the list!')

which, for me, gives:

Found ThisIsMySearchString(LSB) in the list!

Answer 2

只需使用\\即可对括号进行转义。

if (re.search('ThisIsMySearchString\(LSB\)', list, re.I)):

Answer 3

Use re.escape on your patterns first and then normally use re.search . This assumes that you only have literal patterns and never want any special meaning in the patterns.

searchTerms = ['ThisIsMySearchString(LSB)', 'OtherSearchTerm']
list = ['ThisIsMySearchString(LSB)OtherStuffInString', 'OtherStringsToSearch']

for item in searchTerms:
    for targetText in list:
        if (re.search(re.escape(item), targetText, re.I)):
            print('found item', item, 'in', targetText)