More pythonic regex parse

Question

Is there a more pythonic way than doing:

 parsedStr=origStr[compiledRegex.match(origStr).start():compiledRegex.match(origStr).end())

For exampile assume my original string is "The cat said hi" and my compiled regex is "The.*said" I would pull the text "The cat said"

The above code looks ugly but that's how i've been doing it

Answer 1

Use the group method on the match object:

>>> import re
>>> origStr = "The cat said hi"
>>> compiledRegex = re.compile('The.*said')
>>> compiledRegex.match(origStr).group()
'The cat said'

Answer 2

Does this work for you?

instancesFound = compiledRegex.findall(origStr)
if instancesFound:
 parsedStr = parsedParts[0]

Answer 3

Here's how I'd write it:

search = re.compile(r'^The.*said').search
match = search(input)
if match:
 match = match.group(0)

If input is "The cat said my name", match will be "The cat said".

If input is "The cat never mentioned my name", match will be None.

I really like the fact that Python makes it possible to compile a regular expression and assign the particular method of interest to a variable in one line.