Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Word Length

Posted by baderalsayegh
baderalsayegh
19,026 Points

havinf problem with the int varaible in re.find all

Create a function named find_words that takes a count and a string. Return a list of all of the words in the string that are count word characters long or longer

I really dont understand why it cannot read my int variable as a multiplier of the string len,

the code is working if you change the word = re.findall(r'\w{a}', str) into word = re.findall(r'\w{6}', str) the number it self.

can you help me out of here thank you

word_length.py 
import re

# EXAMPLE:
# >>> find_words(4, "dog, cat, baby, balloon, me")
# ['baby', 'balloon']

def find_words(a, str):
    new = []
    word = re.findall(r'\w{a,}', str)
    new.append(word)
    return new

1 Answer

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,457 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,457 Points

The issue is the variable a is not being used. In the regex string r'\w{a,}' the "a" is treated as the Unicode character "a" and not interpreted as the variable a.

To use the variable a, it must be included outside of the string:

r'\w{' + str(a) + ',}'

or inserted through string formatting:

r'\w{{{0},}}'.format(a)

# or

r'\w{%s,}' % a

The second issue is the return value. findall() returns a list, so word can be returned directly without appending it into the list new

    return word
baderalsayegh
baderalsayegh
19,026 Points

thanks cris