Extract names from string with python Regex

Question

I've been trying to extract names from a string, but don't seem to be close to success.

Here is the code:

string = "555-1239Moe Szyslak(636) 555-0113Burns, C. Montgomery555 -6542Rev. Timothy Lovejoy555 8904Ned Flanders636-555-3226Simpson, Homer5553642Dr. Julius Hibbert"
regex = re.compile(r'([A-Z][a-z]+(?: [A-Z][a-z]\.)? [A-Z][a-z]+)')
print(regex.findall(string))

This is the output I'm getting:

['Moe Szyslak', 'Timothy Lovejoy', 'Ned Flanders', 'Julius Hibbert']

Answer 1

Extracting human names even in English is notoriously hard. The following regex solves your particular problem but may fail on other inputs (e.g., it does not capture names with dashes):

re.findall(r"[A-Z][a-z]+,?\s+(?:[A-Z][a-z]*\.?\s*)?[A-Z][a-z]+", string)
#['Moe Szyslak', 'Burns, C. Montgomery', 'Timothy Lovejoy', 
# 'Ned Flanders', 'Simpson, Homer', 'Julius Hibbert']

And with titles:

TITLE = r"(?:[A-Z][a-z]*\.\s*)?"
NAME1 = r"[A-Z][a-z]+,?\s+"
MIDDLE_I = r"(?:[A-Z][a-z]*\.?\s*)?"
NAME2 = r"[A-Z][a-z]+"

re.findall(TITLE + NAME1 + MIDDLE_I + NAME2, string)
#['Moe Szyslak', 'Burns, C. Montgomery', 'Rev. Timothy Lovejoy', 
# 'Ned Flanders', 'Simpson, Homer', 'Dr. Julius Hibbert']

As a side note, there is no need to compile a regex unless you plan to reuse it.