Python Library Reference

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4.2.6 Examples

Python does not currently have an equivalent to scanf().  Regular expressions are generally more powerful, though also more verbose, than scanf() format strings. The table below offers some more-or-less equivalent mappings between scanf() format tokens and regular expressions.

scanf() Token	Regular Expression
%c	.
%5c	.{5}
%d	[-+]?\d+
%e, %E, %f, %g	[-+]?(\d+(\.\d*)?|\d*\.\d+)([eE]\d+)?
%i	[-+]?(0[xX][\dA-Fa-f]+|0[0-7]*|\d+)
%o	0[0-7]*
%s	\S+
%u	\d+
%x, %X	0[xX][\dA-Fa-f]+

To extract the filename and numbers from a string like

    /usr/sbin/sendmail - 0 errors, 4 warnings

you would use a scanf() format like

    %s - %d errors, %d warnings

The equivalent regular expression would be

    ([^\s]+) - (\d+) errors, (\d+) warnings

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Python Library Reference

Previous: 4.2.5 Match Objects Up: 4.2 re Next: 4.3 struct

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Release 2.2.3, documentation updated on 30 May 2003.