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[Python] Using Regular Expression Retain Keyword When Replacing the String

Last Updated on 2022-08-29 by Clay

If we need to match a special keyword with Python, and add HTML tags to the left and right sides, what should we do?

For example, we have to mark the <span style="color: red;"> and </span> on both sides of the "NICE" string to make it show different colors in HTML text.

Very intuitive, everyone should think of the regular expression! You can call the native re module directly in Python.

Outside of the question, although the python string has a .replace() method, it does not support the regular expression; if you want to keep the original keyword, you need to spend more work time.

So, how should we do?


Use \b to match the boundary of keyword

In regular expression, we can use \b to match the boundary of the keyword you want, and then we can insert any tag on the left and right sides.

Let’s take an example.

# coding: utf-8
import re


def main() -> None:
    text = "Today is a nice day! VERY NICE!!!"
    pattern = re.compile(r"\b(nice)\b", re.IGNORECASE)

    new_text = pattern.sub("<span style='color: red'>\\1</span>", text)
    print(new_text)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()


Output:

Today is a <span style='color: red'>nice</span> day! VERY <span style='color: red'>NICE</span>!!!


Yes! we did it! We keep the keyword NICE and insert the HTML tag.

On the browser, it looks like:


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