regex - Python extract pattern matches

Question

Python 2.7.1 I am trying to use python regular expression to extract words inside of a pattern

I have some string that looks like this

someline abc
someother line
name my_user_name is valid
some more lines

I want to extract the word "my_user_name". I do something like

import re
s = #that big string
p = re.compile("name .* is valid", re.flags)
p.match(s) #this gives me <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x026B6838>

How do I extract my_user_name now?

Answer 1

You need to capture from regex. search for the pattern, if found, retrieve the string using group(index). Assuming valid checks are performed:

>>> p = re.compile("name (.*) is valid")
>>> result = p.search(s)
>>> result
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x10555e738>
>>> result.group(1)     # group(1) will return the 1st capture (stuff within the brackets).
                        # group(0) will returned the entire matched text.
'my_user_name'