Lookahead & Lookbehind including markers?

Question

Is it possible to include the markers in a lookahead & lookbehind search?

Example:

str = "my cat is the best pet in the world"
re.findall('(?s)(?<=cat)(.*?)(?=pet)', str)

will return "is the best" what I want is "cat is the best pet"

thanks!

Answer 1

You should just search directly for \\bcat.*?pet\\b and forego with lookarounds:

str = "my cat is the best pet in the world"
m = re.findall(r'\bcat.*?pet\b', str)
print(m)

This prints:

['cat is the best pet']