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Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression?

References <12783654.1174.1331073814011.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yner4>
Date 2012-03-06 14:52 -0800
Subject Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression?
From Chris Rebert <clp2@rebertia.com>
Newsgroups comp.lang.python
Message-ID <mailman.442.1331074333.3037.python-list@python.org> (permalink)

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On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 2:43 PM, John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> wrote:
> I sort of have to work with what the website gives me (as you'll see below), but today I encountered an exception to my RE. Let me just give all the specific information first. The point of my script is to go to the specified URL and extract song information from it.
>
> This is my RE:
>
> song_pattern = re.compile(r'([0-9]{1,2}:[0-9]{2} [a|p].m.).*?<a.*?>(.*?)</a>.*?<a.*?>(.*?)</a>', re.DOTALL)

I would advise against using regular expressions to "parse" HTML:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags

lxml is a popular choice for parsing HTML in Python: http://lxml.de

Cheers,
Chris

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Thread

What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 14:43 -0800
  Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Chris Rebert <clp2@rebertia.com> - 2012-03-06 14:52 -0800
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:02 -0800
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:05 -0800
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:25 -0800
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:33 -0800
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:33 -0800
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 16:35 -0700
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 17:39 -0600
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2012-03-06 20:04 -0500
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:05 -0800
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2012-03-06 23:44 +0000
          Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:57 -0800
            RE: What's the best way to write this regular expression? "Prasad, Ramit" <ramit.prasad@jpmorgan.com> - 2012-03-07 00:04 +0000
            Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2012-03-06 20:06 -0500
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 15:02 -0800
  Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2012-03-06 20:26 -0500
  Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 23:02 -0800
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-03-07 02:36 -0800
  Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 12:39 -0800
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 14:01 -0700
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 15:11 -0600
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 19:38 -0800
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 19:52 -0800
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Benjamin Kaplan <benjamin.kaplan@case.edu> - 2012-03-07 16:27 -0500
    RE: What's the best way to write this regular expression? "Prasad, Ramit" <ramit.prasad@jpmorgan.com> - 2012-03-07 21:31 +0000
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 14:34 -0700
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 15:44 -0600
    Re: RE: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Evan Driscoll <driscoll@cs.wisc.edu> - 2012-03-07 16:02 -0600
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 23:26 -0800
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 16:03 +1100
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 23:25 -0800
  Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 13:33 -0800
    Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 13:40 -0800
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 13:52 -0800
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Gordon <gordon@panix.com> - 2012-03-08 21:54 +0000
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Dave Angel <d@davea.name> - 2012-03-08 17:19 -0500
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? John Salerno <johnjsal@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 16:25 -0600
      RE: What's the best way to write this regular expression? "Prasad, Ramit" <ramit.prasad@jpmorgan.com> - 2012-03-08 23:02 +0000
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Dave Angel <d@davea.name> - 2012-03-08 18:23 -0500
      Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2012-03-08 14:52 -0800
        Re: What's the best way to write this regular expression? jkn <jkn_gg@nicorp.f9.co.uk> - 2012-03-09 02:45 -0800

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