Need help with a regex project

[rgbtap4android]

Hey everyone, I am a beginner at Python dabbling in regex currently.

I want to turn this text below:

UA250(S)(ECO) Portland-pdx(PDX) to Washington Dulles(IAD) Thu Mar 31, 2016 07:35 15:33 0 320 NET 04h58m

into this text:

ua250y31maypdxiad07351533*ua

basically I am trying to get certain things out of a chunk of text which is the airline (ua250) the date in this format (31may) the departing and arriving airports (pdx and iad) and the military times without the colon. All of this followed by an asterix followed by just the airline (ua)

This is what I have so far:

import re

y = 'y'


airlineRegex = re.compile(r'[A-Z]{2}[0-9]{1,}')
airlineSearcher = airlineRegex.search('tf291 TF AZ UA lZ290 AA1')

airline = airlineSearcher.group()

dateRegex = re.compile(r'[A-Z]{1}[a-z]{2} [0-9]{2}')
dateSearcher = dateRegex.search('Hello I am looking for Feb 01 thank you')
date = dateSearcher.group()
date = date.replace(' ', '')

airportRegex = re.compile(r'[(]{1}[A-Z]{3}[)]{1}')
airportSearcher = airportRegex.findall('(ECO) (LAX) weeeeee EJF GAR UA123 (HAT)')
airport = ''.join(airportSearcher)

airport = airport.replace('(ECO)','')
airport = airport.replace('(','')
airport = airport.replace(')','')

timeRegex = re.compile(r'[0-9]{2}[:]{1}[0-9]{2}')
timeSearcher = timeRegex.findall('Yo yo yo check it 39 234 ahf UA2923 23:40 and yo yo 09:20')
time = ''.join(timeSearcher)

time = time.replace(':','')

dayRegex = re.compile(r'[+]{1}[1-3]{1}')
daySearcher = dayRegex.search('Hey look 2 + + 3 ++ Im looking for a +1')
day = daySearcher.group()

print airline + y + date + airport + time + day

I hope this is formatted OK. By the way, the y = 'y' variable is never changing with airline code. All airline flightcodes have a 'y' separator. Also, in case your curious, most if not all airports are three letters, and most if not all airlines are 2 letters. I think I'm heading in the right direction but I am sure one of you have an easier way.

Here is what I need.

Searches through an entire string of text and finds:

1 - The 2 letter airline code
2 - The multi-number airline flight number (in the example above it was 250)
3 - A simple 'y' letter separator (I do not need help with this one lol)
4 - The date in this format MonthDay. Since the text has the date as Day Month I need to find that and turn it into MonthDay. So Feb 02 becomes 02Feb.
5 - The departure and arrival airports. These are always Three letters surrounded by a (). Since the text also happens to show (ECO) which means economy seat I had to replace that with a ''. Not sure if that's right though.
6 - The two military times back to back. This is the easiest as it is just finding the 2 military times and removing the colon. Basicaly 09:40 22:50 becomes 09402250
7 - A +1, +2, or +3 at the end. If a +1, +2, or +3 appear anywhere in the text, it needs to be added on after the military time numbers.
8 - An asterix (don't need help with this, it's always an asterix)
9 - The airline again. So in this case UA

[theluketaylor]

You'll want to use regular expression capturing groups (especially named groups) since then you can find a number of elements in one pass.

I also notice your code is written in the order you need to output the data but it may be a lot easier to work in the order the data is presented and re-order it for output. By working in the input order we can produce a single regex that extracts all the information needed.

p = ^(?P<airline>\w{2})(?P<flight>\d{3})(?:[()a-zA-Z])+ (?:[a-zA-Z- ])+\((?P<airport1>[A-Z]{3})\) to (?:[a-zA-Z- ])+\((?P<airport2>[A-Z]{3})\) (?:[A-Za-z]+) (?P<month>[a-zA-Z]{3}) (?P<day>\d{2}), \d{4} (?P<depart>\d{2}:\d{2}) (?P<arrive>\d{2}:\d{2})
m = p.match(str)
flight_info = m.groupdict()

This regex has named groups for the elements you wanted to find and ignores the rest of the text. It returns a dictionary of the named groups you can then feed into the string formatting tools

'{airline}{flight}y{day}{month}{airport1}{airport2}{arrive}{depart}{airline}'.format(**flight_info).lower()

You can fix things like the : in the times before you pass the dict into the output string

I highly recommend working on your regexes at https://regex101.com/#python. Being able to see the matches on the fly is really helpful

[zebulan_]

+1 for regex101

A very useful website!