How can I create search terms with wildcards in Python?

Question

I want to check whether a certain term is contained in a document. However, sometimes, the word is in several forms (plural, past tense, etc).

'Hello Worlds'
'Hellos Worlds'
'Jello World'
'Hello Worlded'

How can I create a search term which will find all instances such as

'*ello* World*'

where star is a wild card that doesn't necessarily have to be included in the word.

I found documentation for an fnmatch module, but I can't see how that can help me search through a document.

Answer 1

Use regular expressions and just loop through the file:

import re
f=open('test.file.here', 'r')

pattern = re.compile("^[^\s]*ello[^\s]*\sWorld[^\s]*$")

for line in f:
  if pattern.match(line):
    print line,

f.close()

Answer 2

I would usually opt for a regular expression, but if for some reason you want to stick to the wildcard format, you can do this:

from fnmatch import fnmatch

pattern = '*ello* World*'

with open('sample.txt') as file:
    for line in f:
        if fnmatch(line, pattern):
            print(line)

Answer 3

The * syntax you describe is known as globbing. It doesn't work for documents, just files and directories. Regular expressions, as others have noted, are the answer.

Answer 4

If you're doing anything complicated, regular expressions are the way to go. If you're not comfortable with those, I think for your specific question you could also use "in". For example:

x = 'hello world'
if 'ello' in x and 'world' in x':
     print 'matches'
else:
     print 'does not match'