Python regex bad character range.

Question

I am using the following regex to match different patterns of dates. it works fine in regex101.com. But when I import to python i am getting "bad character range" exception.

  pattern = ur"((?:\b((?:(january|jan|february|feb|march|mar|april|apr|may|jun|june|july|jul|august|aug|september|set|sep|october|oct|november|nov|december|dec)['\s\.]{0,4}(?:\d{4}|\d{2})|(?:january|jan|february|feb|march|mar|april|apr|may|jun|june|july|jul|august|aug|september|set|sep|october|oct|november|nov|december|dec)|((?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9]|[0-9])/(?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9])/(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9]))|((?:0[1-9]|1[0-2]|[1-9])\s{0,3}[-/']{1,3}[\s-/']{0,3}(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9])))))(?:(?![\r\n])\s){0,4})[-/–to]{0,2}(?:(?![\r\n])\s){0,4}(((?:january|jan|february|feb|march|mar|april|apr|may|jun|june|july|jul|august|aug|september|set|sep|october|oct|november|nov|december|dec)[-'\s\.]{0,4}(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9])))|((?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9]|[1-9])/(?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9])/(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9])))|((?:0[1-9]|1[0-2]|[1-9])\s{0,3}[-/']{1,3}[\s-/']{0,3}(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9]))))))"

  https://regex101.com/r/rU3cE9/1

Answer 1

Problem is mainly because of the hyphen present inside [\s-/'] character class, therefore Python interprets it as a character interval (like in [a-z]). I suggest you to put the hyphen at the first or at the last position inside the character class [-\s/'] or escape it, to prevent ambiguity.

>>> reg = re.compile(ur"((?:\b((?:(january|jan|february|feb|march|mar|april|apr|may|jun|june|july|jul|august|aug|september|set|sep|october|oct|november|nov|december|dec)['\s\.]{0,4}(?:\d{4}|\d{2})|(?:january|jan|february|feb|march|mar|april|apr|may|jun|june|july|jul|august|aug|september|set|sep|october|oct|november|nov|december|dec)|((?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9]|[0-9])/(?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9])/(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9]))|((?:0[1-9]|1[0-2]|[1-9])\s{0,3}[-/']{1,3}[-\s/']{0,3}(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9])))))(?:(?![\r\n])\s){0,4})[-/to–]{0,2}(?:(?![\r\n])\s){0,4}(((?:january|jan|february|feb|march|mar|april|apr|may|jun|june|july|jul|august|aug|september|set|sep|october|oct|november|nov|december|dec)[-'\s\.]{0,4}(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9])))|((?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9]|[1-9])/(?:0[1-9]|[1-3][0-9])/(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9])))|((?:0[1-9]|1[0-2]|[1-9])\s{0,3}[-/']{1,3}[-\s/']{0,3}(?:(19[7-9][0-9])|(20[0-1][0-9])|([7-9][0-9]|[0-1][0-9]))))))")
>>>