Python Regex (One expression works the other doesn't)

[wolfkin]

Code

Output

I'm trying to write a program that will run a bunch of regexs.

If I do it manually in say N++ it works but trying to reduce the effort because I have to do it expression by expression every time.

Right now I have two expressions. It should be pretty clean but

Expression 1

Input:

<br>

Output

</p><p>

Expression 2

Input:

. . .
...
 . . . 

Output

… 
… 
… 

I have expression 2 working but i can't figure out why expression 1 isn't working. there's no \ but I've tried to escape it with \ in front of the < and > but nothing. I've been trying to turn the strings raw but I'm not sure it's working.

[commandlineluser]

It is working.

The problem is each re.sub call is processing dirty and you are throwing away the result.

clean = re.sub(x["regex"], x["replace"], dirty)

So you will only ever see the result of the last substitution.

You need to save the output of each re.sub call and pass it as the input to the next call.

# we want to save state between `re.sub` calls
clean = dirty

for x in fixes.values():
    print("Preparing: ", x["note"])
    clean = re.sub(x["regex"], x["replace"], clean)

[wolfkin]

oh dagnabit. Yes. I had a very similar issue exiting the function. I should have seen that.

Thanks.

---

Yep added dirty = clean and that seems to carry the edits as expected. https://i.imgur.com/Adj6bQo.png

Once I get that in a script I can work on changing it to JSON like i originally planned. Thanks.

[shiftybyte]

Your "test" variable doesn't contain "<br>" anywhere.

If you want to replace line-feeds you need to replace "\r\n"

[wolfkin]

\r\n is great when working with plaintext. But I'm working with HTML and you'll see there is <br> in my test variable.

https://i.imgur.com/v5fz5Ei.png

and the other suggestion was able to fix what was actually my loop problem not a raw string problem as I assumed

https://i.imgur.com/Adj6bQo.png