How to use regex with optional characters in python?

Question

Say I have a string

\"3434.35353\"

and another string

\"3593\"

How do I make a single regular expression

Answer 1

Use the "one or zero" quantifier, ?. Your regex becomes: (\d+(\.\d+)?).

See Chapter 8 of the TextWrangler manual for more details about the different quantifiers available, and how to use them.