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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 PointsHelp with debugging reg expressions
I'm following along with this video, and my code is outputting just an empty array with no errors. What am I doing wrong and how do I debug this?
Here is my code:
import re
names_file = open("names.txt", encoding="utf-8")
data = names_file.read()
names_file.close()
print(re.findall(r'''
([-\w ]+,\s[-\w ]+)\t # first and last names
([-\w\d.+]+@[-\w\d.]+)\t # email
(\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s?d{3}-\d{4})\t # phone number
([\w\s]+,\s[\w\s]+)\t # job, company
(@[\w\d]+) # Twitter
''', data, re.X))
Here here is the text of names.txt:
Love, Kenneth kenneth@teamtreehouse.com (555) 555-5555 Teacher, Treehouse @kennethlove McFarland, Dave dave@teamtreehouse.com (555) 555-5554 Teacher, Treehouse Arthur, King king_arthur@camelot.co.uk King, Camelot Österberg, Sven-Erik governor@norrbotten.co.se Governor, Norrbotten @sverik , Tim tim@killerrabbit.com Enchanter, Killer Rabbit Cave Carson, Ryan ryan@teamtreehouse.com (555) 555-5543 CEO, Treehouse @ryancarson Doctor, The doctor+companion@tardis.co.uk Time Lord, Gallifrey Exampleson, Example me@example.com 555-555-5552 Example, Example Co. @example Obama, Barack president.44@us.gov 555 555-5551 President, United States of America @potus44 Chalkley, Andrew andrew@teamtreehouse.com (555) 555-5553 Teacher, Treehouse @chalkers Vader, Darth darth-vader@empire.gov (555) 555-4444 Sith Lord, Galactic Empire @darthvader Fernández de la Vega Sanz, María Teresa mtfvs@spain.gov First Deputy Prime Minister, Spanish Govt.
2 Answers
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,457 PointsHey Brendan,
I was able to debug this by commenting out each line of the regex and fixing it until I got the 12 output lines. I then uncommented one line and fixed it, etc. Here is my solution:
import re
names_file = open("names.txt", encoding="utf-8")
data = names_file.read()
names_file.close()
# original re
# print(re.findall(r'''
# ([-\w ]+,\s[-\w ]+)\t # first and last names
# ([-\w\d.+]+@[-\w\d.]+)\t # email
# (\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s?d{3}-\d{4})\t # phone number
# ([\w\s]+,\s[\w\s]+)\t # job, company
# (@[\w\d]+) # Twitter
# ''', data, re.X))
results = re.findall(r'''
# replace + with * to catch empty last_name
([-\w ]*,\s[-\w ]+)\t # first and last names
([-\w\d.+]+@[-\w\d.]+)\t # email
# added missing \ in front of second digits field
# added trailing ? to make phone field optional
(\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s?\d{3}-\d{4})?\t # phone number
# added missing . in company name
([\w\s]+,\s[\w\s.]+)\t? # job, company
# added ? to make last field optional
(@[\w\d]+)? # Twitter
''', data, re.X | re.MULTILINE)
# added missing 're.MULTILINE' option to parse multiline input spliting on EOL
# added index printing to track who was matching not matching
for index, item in enumerate(results):
print(index+1, item)
Josh Keenan
20,315 PointsTry adding re.M at the end, post again if it doesn't help!
Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 PointsBrendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 PointsThank you!!!!