Replace text, Jython, Regex

Question

Hey,

I am processing my website and wanting to change some things on the pages.

I am wanting to replace the following string:

in the
<SPAN class="Bold">
More...
</SPAN>
column to your right.

Some times is does not have the <span> tags :

in the
More...
column to your right.

I would like to replace this with "below". I tried doing this with a simple replace() in python but because sometime the text does not have the <span> tag and is on multiple lines it does not seem to work. My only thought is using regular expressions but I am not up to speed with regex's, could anyone lend a hand?

Thanks

Eef

Answer 1

Assuming you have the html text in the string "foo", the code to do this in Python would be like:

import re
#re.DOTALL is used to make the . match all characters including newline
regexp = re.compile('in the.*?More\.\.\..*?column to your right\.', re.DOTALL)
re.sub(regexp, 'below', foo)

Answer 2

Try this:

import re
pattern = re.compile('(?:<SPAN class="Bold">\s*)?More\.\.\.(?:\s*</SPAN>)?')
str = re.sub(pattern, 'below', str)

The (?:…) syntax is a non-capturing grouping which cannot be referenced as a backreference.