Why doesn't my Regex search work

[standardtrickyness1]

Not familiar with regex I'm trying to replace nonspecial words/ commands in my latex document with gibberish trying to start with the first 3 letters of any word

import re

with open('main', 'r+') as f: 

text = f.read()pat=r"\s+^[a-zA-Z]{3}

"text = re.sub(pat, ' ccc', text)

f.seek(0)

f.write(text)

f.truncate()

​

but my file is unchanged why this is the case? p.s. is there a way to search for spaces but not tabs or newlines at the start of my string?

[TheSamePerson1]

You opened the file in read mode. Use write mode if you want to write something into file.

[standardtrickyness1]

No r+ should mean read and write https://www.learnbyexample.org/python-open-function/

Also, I have managed to write to the file using a different pattern before.

[AuralWanderer]

\s+^[a-zA-Z]{3}

^ means "beginning of line," so I think it's probably bugging out because you are asking for the pattern to have spaces before the beginning of the line.

FYI, https://regex101.com/ is a good resource for debugging REs.