Escaping regex string

Question

I want to use input from a user as a regex pattern for a search over some text   It works  but how I can handle cases where user puts characters that have meaning in regex  For example  the user wants to search for Word  s   regex engine will take the  s  as a group   I want it to treat it like a string  quot  s  quot     I can run replace on user input and replace the   with    and the   with    but the problem is I will need to do replace for every possible regex symbol  Do you know some better way

User · Accepted Answer

Use the re escape   function for this   4 2 3 re Module Contents     escape string       Return string with all non-alphanumerics backslashed  this is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that may have regular expression metacharacters in it    A simplistic example  search any occurence of the provided string optionally followed by  s   and return the match object   def simplistic plural word  text       word or plural   re escape word     s       return re match word or plural  text

User · Answer

Unfortunately  re escape   is not suited for the replacement string    gt  gt  gt  re sub  a   re escape        aa              A solution is to put the replacement in a lambda    gt  gt  gt  re sub  a   lambda          aa          because the return value of the lambda is treated by re sub   as a literal string

User · Answer

Unfortunately  re escape   is not suited for the replacement string    gt  gt  gt  re sub  a   re escape        aa              A solution is to put the replacement in a lambda    gt  gt  gt  re sub  a   lambda          aa          because the return value of the lambda is treated by re sub   as a literal string

User · Answer

You can use re escape     re escape string  Return string with all non-alphanumerics backslashed  this is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that may have regular expression metacharacters in it    gt  gt  gt  import re  gt  gt  gt  re escape   a          a            If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax as well  If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7 but  gt   3 3  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax  except for specifically underscore

User · Answer

You can use re escape     re escape string  Return string with all non-alphanumerics backslashed  this is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that may have regular expression metacharacters in it    gt  gt  gt  import re  gt  gt  gt  re escape   a          a            If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax as well  If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7 but  gt   3 3  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax  except for specifically underscore

User · Answer

You can use re escape     re escape string  Return string with all non-alphanumerics backslashed  this is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that may have regular expression metacharacters in it    gt  gt  gt  import re  gt  gt  gt  re escape   a          a            If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax as well  If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7 but  gt   3 3  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax  except for specifically underscore

User · Answer

Please give a try    Q and  E as anchors  Put an Or condition to match either a full word or regex   Ref Link   How to match a whole word that includes special characters in regex

User · Answer

Please give a try    Q and  E as anchors  Put an Or condition to match either a full word or regex   Ref Link   How to match a whole word that includes special characters in regex

User · Answer

You can use re escape     re escape string  Return string with all non-alphanumerics backslashed  this is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that may have regular expression metacharacters in it    gt  gt  gt  import re  gt  gt  gt  re escape   a          a            If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax as well  If you are using a Python version  lt  3 7 but  gt   3 3  this will escape non-alphanumerics that are not part of regular expression syntax  except for specifically underscore

[python] Escaping regex string

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