# coding=utf8
# the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility
import re
regex = r"""
\[\ (RUNNING|STOPPED)\ \]
(.+?)
(?:\[Pid:\ (\d+)\]|$)
"""
test_str = ("\n\n"
"I want to extract the words between the two bracket \"blocks\" and also the word in first brackets (RUNNING or STOPPED).\n\n"
"Example (extract the bolded part):\n\n"
"[ RUNNING ] My First Application [Pid: 4194]\n\n"
"[ RUNNING ] Second app (some data) [Pid: 5248]\n\n"
"[ STOPPED ] Logger App\n\n"
"So, as you can see, the [Pid: X] part is optional. I can write the regex as follows:\n\n"
"\\[\\s+(RUNNING|STOPPED)\\s+\\]\\s+([^\\[]+).*\n\n"
"and it will work. But this would fail if App name would contain the '[' character. I tried the following, but it won't work:\n\n"
"\\[\\s+(RUNNING|STOPPED)\\s+\\]\\s+(?!\\[Pid)+.*\n\n"
"My idea was to match any words/characters that are not starting with \"[Pid\", but I guess this would match any words that are not followed by \"[Pid\".\n\n"
"Is there any way to do exactly that: Match any word that is not \"[Pid\", i.e. match the part until first appearing of \"[Pid\" substring?\n")
matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.VERBOSE | re.MULTILINE)
for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1):
print ("Match {matchNum} was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(matchNum = matchNum, start = match.start(), end = match.end(), match = match.group()))
for groupNum in range(0, len(match.groups())):
groupNum = groupNum + 1
print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = match.start(groupNum), end = match.end(groupNum), group = match.group(groupNum)))
# Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html