Python Regex to match a string as a pattern and return number

Question

I have some lines that represent some data in a text file. They are all of the following format:

s = 'TheBears      SUCCESS Number of wins : 14'

They all begin with the name then whitespace and the text 'SUCCESS Number of wins : ' and finally the number of wins, n1. There are multiple strings each with a different name and value. I am trying to write a program that can parse any of these strings and return the name of the dataset and the numerical value at the end of the string. I am trying to use regular expressions to do this and I have come up with the following:

import re
def winnumbers(s):
    pattern = re.compile(r"""(?P<name>.*?)     #starting name
                             \s*SUCCESS        #whitespace and success
                             \s*Number\s*of\s*wins  #whitespace and strings
                             \s*\:\s*(?P<n1>.*?)""",re.VERBOSE)
    match = pattern.match(s)

    name = match.group("name")
    n1 = match.group("n1")

    return (name, n1)

So far, my program can return the name, but the trouble comes after that. They all have the text "SUCCESS Number of wins : " so my thinking was to find a way to match this text. But I realize that my method of matching an exact substring isn't correct right now. Is there any way to match a whole substring as part of the pattern? I have been reading quite a bit on regular expressions lately but haven't found anything like this. I'm still really new to programming and I appreciate any assistance.

Eventually, I will use float() to return n1 as a number, but I left that out because it doesn't properly find the number in the first place right now and would only return an error.

Answer 1

Try this one out:

((\S+)\s+SUCCESS Number of wins : (\d+))

These are the results:

>>> regex = re.compile("((\S+)\s+SUCCESS Number of wins : (\d+))")
>>> r = regex.search(string)
>>> r
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xc827cf478a56b350>
>>> regex.match(string)
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xc827cf478a56b228>

# List the groups found
>>> r.groups()
(u'TheBears SUCCESS Number of wins : 14', u'TheBears', u'14')

# List the named dictionary objects found
>>> r.groupdict()
{}

# Run findall
>>> regex.findall(string)
[(u'TheBears SUCCESS Number of wins : 14', u'TheBears', u'14')]
# So you can do this for the name and number:
>>> fullstring, name, number = r.groups()

If you don't need the full string just remove the surround parenthesis.