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\B in Python regular expressions
regular expressions, regular expression, \B, \b, wordboundry, word boundry
23rd of July 2005
Today I learnt about how to use the \B gadget in Python regular expressions. I've previously talked about the usefulness of \b but there's a big benefit to using \B sometimes too.
What \b does is that it is a word-boundary for alphanumerics. It allows you to find "peter" in "peter bengtsson" but not "peter" in "nickname: peterbe". In other words, all the letters have to be grouped prefixed or suffixed by a wordboundry such as newline, start-of-line, end-of-line or a non alpha character like (.
What \b does for finding alphanumerics, \B does for finding non-alphanumerics. Example:
>>> re.compile(r'\bX\b').findall('X + Y')
['X'] # it can find 'X'
>>> re.compile(r'\b\+\b').findall('X + Y')
[] # same technique can't find '+'
>>> re.compile(r'\B\+\B').findall('X + Y')
['+'] # better to use \B when finding '+'
>>> re.compile(r'\BX\B').findall('X + Y')
[] # and use \B only for non-alphanumerics
The lesson is: \b is a really useful tool but it's limited to finding alphanumerics (numbers and A-Z). \B is what you have to use for finding non-alphanumerics.
