Python: Find a string between two special characters, repeatedly

Question

I have a paragraph like this:

paragraph = "Dear {{userName}},

You have been registered successfully. Our Manager {{managerName}} will contact soon.

Thanks"

I need to parse all the strings within {{}}. There could be many more like that in the paragraph.

I tried this solution:

result = re.search('{{(.*)}}',paragraph)
print(result.group(1))
# output is 'userName}} {{ManagerName' 

Output I wanted is:

["userName","managerName",....]

Please help.

Thanks

Answer 1

Use re.findall

Ex:

import re

paragraph = """Dear {{userName}},
You have been registered successfully. Our Manager {{managerName}} will contact soon.
Thanks"""

print( re.findall(r"\{\{(.*?)\}\}", paragraph) )

Output:

['userName', 'managerName']

Answer 2

Here is an alternative solution without needing regex. You can just find the positions of {{ and }} using str.find() .

closebrace = 0
while True:
    openbrace = paragraph.find('{{', closebrace)
    if openbrace == -1:
        break
    closebrace = paragraph.find('}}', openbrace)

    # You now have the positions of open and close braces,
    # check if close brace is -1, then do whatever you want with them
    print(openbrace, closebrace)