Extract All Regex Matches With Python

The aim of this playbook🏁 is to list steps for extracting all regex matches with Python’s re module.

import re

def extractImages(filename):
    imgReg = re.compile("../assets/(.*jpg|.*png)")
    with open(filename, mode="rt", encoding="utf-8") as docFile:
        doc = docFile.read()
        images = re.findall(imgReg, doc)
    return ["./assets/" + img for img in images]
# later used in e.g. [os.remove(img) for img in extractImages(filename)]
# above deletes all images located in ./assets/<filename>.jpg|png

1. import re module
2. define regex and assign it within the regex compile object with reg = re.compile(<regex>). You of course need to define a capture group to be extracted I.e. with http://pavol.kutaj.com/assets/(.*jpg|.*png) — only the image filename and not http://pavol.kutaj.com/assets/ location is extracted
3. open the file with with open(...) as alias: statement
4. assign the content of the file with inputObj = alias.read()
5. assign the list of matches with matches = re.findall(inputObj, reg)

• If the match contains more than one group, re.findall() will return a list of matching tuples, not a list of matching strings