pandas ValueError: pattern contains no capture groups

Question

When using regular expression, I get:

import re
string = r\'http://www.example.com/abc.html\'
result = re.search(\'^.*com\', string).group()

<

Answer 1

According to the docs, you need to specify a capture group (i.e., parentheses) for str.extract to, well, extract.

Series.str.extract(pat, flags=0, expand=True)
For each subject string in the Series, extract groups from the first match of regular expression pat.

Each capture group constitutes its own column in the output.

df.url.str.extract(r'(.*.com)')

                        0
0  http://www.example.com
1    http://www.hello.com

# If you need named capture groups,
df.url.str.extract(r'(?P.*.com)')

                      URL
0  http://www.example.com
1    http://www.hello.com

Or, if you need a Series,

df.url.str.extract(r'(.*.com)', expand=False)

0    http://www.example.com
1      http://www.hello.com
Name: url, dtype: object