How do I return a string from a regex match in python

Question

I am running through lines in a text file using a python script  I want to search for an img tag within the text document and return the tag as text   When I run the regex re match line  it returns a   sre SRE MATCH object  How do I get it to return a string   import sys import string import re  f   open  sample txt    r    l   open  writetest txt    w    count   1  for line in f      line   line rstrip       imgtag    re match r  lt img    gt   line      print  yo it s a     format imgtag     When run it prints   yo it s a None yo it s a None yo it s a None yo it s a  lt  sre SRE Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e578 gt  yo it s a None yo it s a  lt  sre SRE Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e578 gt  yo it s a None yo it s a  lt  sre SRE Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e578 gt  yo it s a  lt  sre SRE Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e5e0 gt  yo it s a None yo it s a None

User · Accepted Answer

You should use re MatchObject group 0   Like  imtag   re match r  lt img    gt    line  group 0    Edit   You also might be better off doing something like  imgtag    re match r  lt img    gt   line  if imtag      print  yo it s a     format imgtag group 0      to eliminate all the Nones

User · Answer

Note that re match pattern  string  flags 0  only returns matches at the beginning of the string  If you want to locate a match anywhere in the string  use re search pattern  string  flags 0  instead  https   docs python org 3 library re html   This will scan the string and return the first match object  Then you can extract the matching string with match object group 0  as the folks suggested

User · Answer

Considering there might be several img tags I would recommend re findall   import re  with open  sample txt    r   as f in  open  writetest txt    w   as f out      for line in f in          for img in re findall   lt img   gt    gt    line               print  gt  gt  f out   yo it s a     format img

User · Answer

imgtag group 0  or imgtag group     This returns the entire match as a string   You are not capturing anything else either   http   docs python org release 2 5 2 lib match-objects html

[python] How do I return a string from a regex match in python?

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