Python wildcard search in string

Question

Lets say that I have a list

list = ['this','is','just','a','test'] 

how can I have a user do a wildcard search?

Search Word: 'th_s'

Would return 'this'

Answer 1

Use fnmatch:

import fnmatch lst = ['this','is','just','a','test'] filtered = fnmatch.filter(lst, 'th?s') 

If you want to allow _ as a wildcard, just replace all underscores with '?' (for one character) or * (for multiple characters).

If you want your users to use even more powerful filtering options, consider allowing them to use regular expressions.