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Python Regular Expressions in Python Introduction to Regular Expressions Email

regex sets trailing comma

This is challenging; I've passed this challenge earlier this summer. I can't pass it now.

SHOULD RETURN: "kenneth@teamtreehouse.com"

but it erroneously returns a trailing comma at the end: "kenneth@teamtreehouse.com,"

Thank you!

sets_email.py
import re

# Example:
# >>> find_email("kenneth.love@teamtreehouse.com, @support, ryan@teamtreehouse.com, test+case@example.co.uk")
# ['kenneth@teamtreehouse.com', 'ryan@teamtreehouse.com', 'test@example.co.uk']

def find_emails(string):
    return re.findall(r'\w+\W?\w*@\w+.\w+.?\w*', string)

# Got       ['kenneth@teamtreehouse.com,', 'andrew+gotcha@teamtreehouse.com,', 'exa.mple@example.co.uk'], 
# expected  ['kenneth@teamtreehouse.com', 'andrew+gotcha@teamtreehouse.com', 'exa.mple@example.co.uk']. 

2 Answers

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,427 Points

Challenging question! The issue is trying to capture the second optional period and domain extension. By using ".?\w*" with no qualifiers, the period means any optional character followed by zero or more word characters. This is fine in the third match, but causes the comma to be accepted in the first two matches.

The fix is to specify the period is literal and not a wildcard. Precede it with a backslash to look for a literal period: "\.?\w*'"

If you’re looking for a more dense and readable solution, try using of character sets to list groups of valid characters, such as:

  • [.+\w]+
  • [.\w]+

Thanks Chris!! So when you say:

the period means any optional character

does that mean anything at all, including letters, numbers, etc.?

Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,427 Points

Yes, in regex, a β€œ.” (period) means any character. So β€œ.?” means any optional character. And β€œ.*” means any number of any character. A literal period needs the backslash.

Brendan Whiting
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 Points

I got it to work by adding the 'word boundary' \b at the end of the regex.

def find_emails(string):
    return re.findall(r'\w+\W?\w*@\w+.\w+.?\w*\b', string)