Extract Only First Match Using Python Regular Expression

I have a string as follows: course_name = 'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)' I want to extract only the 'PGCPRM' or whatever within the v

Solution 1:

Pretty simple:

In [8]: course_name
Out[8]: 'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)'

In [9]: print re.sub('\([A-Z]+\)\s*', '', course_name)
Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)

In [17]: print re.search('\(([A-Z]+)\)\s*', course_name).groups()[0]
PGCPRM

Solution 2:

You can use str.replace() :

>>>course_name = "Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)">>>course_name.replace('(PGCPRM) ','')
'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)'

edit: if you want to replace the word before (Online) you need regex and a positive look-behind:

>>> re.sub(r'(\(\w+\) )(?=\(Online\))','',course_name)
'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)'

Or if you want to remove the first parentheses use following :

>>> re.sub(r'(\(\w+\) ).*?','',course_name)
'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)'

and for extract it use re.search :

>>> re.search(r'(\(.*?\))',course_name).group(0)
'(PGCPRM)'

Solution 3:

To extract value within first parenthesis

>>>course_name = "Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)">>>x = re.search(r'\(.*?\)',course_name).group()>>>x
'(PGCPRM)'

And then to replace

>>> course_name.replace(x,'')
'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management  (Online)'