Obtain house number from street address

Question

Set-up

I have strings containing UK format addresses, eg address = '6A McCarthy Way' .

I need to obtain the house number from the address, eg house_number = '6A

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Current Code

I have the following working code,

position = re.search('\d+', address).start()

if position == 0:
    for i in range(0,100000):    
        if address[position + i] != ' ':
            house_number = address[:position + i + 1]    
        else:
            break
else:
    house_number = address[position:]     

For both address = '6A McCarthy Way' and address = 'McCarthy Way 6A' , the code returns house_number = '6A' .

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Problem

This code assumes that

• the house number will either be at the beginning or end of address
• the house number and address will be of the above 2 formats only – eg never address = '6A, McCarthy Way' or address = '6 McCarthy Way'
• there are no mistakes in address – eg never address = '6AMcCarthy Way'

Lastly, even if the assumptions hold for all cases, I'm not sure this is the most pythonic way of doing it.

How can I improve the code?

Answer 1

Using re.search

import re
address = '6A McCarthy Way' 
address2 = 'McCarthy Way 6A'
address3 = 'McCarthy Way 6AAAA'

print(re.search("(\d+\w*)", address).group())
print(re.search("(\d+\w*)", address2).group()) 
print(re.search("(\d+\w*)", address3).group())

Output:

6A
6A
6AAAA