2008/10/7 Deitemeyer, Adam R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I'm a beginner Python user and I have simple python issue I can't seem to > solve. I want to do a truth test on a string to see if a another string is > contained within it. I found that typically the re module has the methods > to accomplish this. However, every string I'm searching begins with a > metacharacter. For example: if the string '*I need *help' contains the word > 'help' then true, else false.. Any advice you can provide would be great.
The presence of metacharacters shouldn't be a problem with regular expressions; you can just "escape" them by putting a backslash (\) before the character. However ... your problem is sufficiently simple that you don't need regular expressions. The 'in' operator will do it for you: >>> strings = ['I need help', 'This string does not contain the word', 'I no >>> longer need help'] >>> for s in strings: ... if 'help' in s: ... print s ... I need help I no longer need help >>> If you are worried about case sensitivity, you can use the string method .lower(): >>> 'help' in 'One HeLP twO' False >>> 'help' in 'One HeLP twO'.lower() True >>> HTH! -- John. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
