Grouping

Lesson 16 of 28 in Coddy's RegEx in Python course.

Grouping in regex is used to group parts of a pattern together. This is useful when you want to apply quantifiers to an entire group of characters or to capture parts of the match for later use.

import re

text = "The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain."
pattern = r"(in\s\w+)"
matches = re.findall(pattern, text)

print(matches)  # Output: ['in Spain', 'in the', 'in the']

In the above example, the pattern (in\s\w+) groups the string "in" followed by a whitespace character and one or more word characters. The findall function returns a list of all matching groups.

Challenge

Easy

Write a function named find_repeated_phrases that takes a text string as input and returns a list of phrases that contain a word followed by an exclamation mark !.

Try it yourself

import re

def find_repeated_phrases(text):
    # Write code here

All lessons in RegEx in Python

1Introduction

Introduction

4Anchors and Quantifiers

Anchors Boundaries Quantifiers Repetitions

7Final Challenges

Extracting Hashtags Finding Email Addresses Valid Phone Numbers Finding Dates Capitalized Words

2re Library

findall search split sub

5Grouping and Advanced Patterns

GroupingCapturing Pipe Operator Alternation Lookaheads Lookbehinds

3Basic Pattern Syntax

Basic Metacharacters Literals Character Classes Ranges Common Predefined Classes Advanced Predefined Classes

6Advanced Techniques

Escape Metacharacters Escape Sequences