Mastering Python Regular Expressions

Chapter 1. Introducing Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are text patterns that define the form a text string should have. Using them, among other usages, it will be possible to do the following activities:

• Check if an input honors a given pattern; for example, we can check whether a value entered in a HTML formulary is a valid e-mail address
• Look for a pattern appearance in a piece of text; for example, check if either the word "color" or the word "colour" appears in a document with just one scan
• Extract specific portions of a text; for example, extract the postal code of an address
• Replace portions of text; for example, change any appearance of "color" or "colour" with "red"
• Split a larger text into smaller pieces, for example, splitting a ...