Python match a string with regex

Question

I need a python regular expression to check if a word is present in a string. The string is separated by commas, potentially.

So for example,

line =          


        

Answer 1

The r makes the string a raw string, which doesn't process escape characters (however, since there are none in the string, it is actually not needed here).

Also, re.match matches from the beginning of the string. In other words, it looks for an exact match between the string and the pattern. To match stuff that could be anywhere in the string, use re.search. See a demonstration below:

>>> import re
>>> line = 'This,is,a,sample,string'
>>> re.match("sample", line)
>>> re.search("sample", line)
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x021D32C0>
>>>