On Fri, 11 May 2007 08:54:31 -0700, johnny wrote: > I need to get the content inside the bracket. > > eg. some characters before bracket (3.12345). > > I need to get whatever inside the (), in this case 3.12345. > > How do you do this with python regular expression?
Why would you bother? If you know your string is a bracketed expression, all you need is: s = "(3.12345)" contents = s[1:-1] # ignore the first and last characters If your string is more complex: s = "lots of things here (3.12345) and some more things here" then the task is harder. In general, you can't use regular expressions for that, you need a proper parser, because brackets can be nested. But if you don't care about nested brackets, then something like this is easy: def get_bracket(s): p, q = s.find('('), s.find(')') if p == -1 or q == -1: raise ValueError("Missing bracket") if p > q: raise ValueError("Close bracket before open bracket") return s[p+1:q-1] Or as a one liner with no error checking: s[s.find('(')+1:s.find(')'-1] -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list