Search in a string and obtain the 2 words before and after the match in Python

Question

I\'m using Python to search some words (also multi-token) in a description (string).

To do that I\'m using a regex like this

    result = re.search(w         


        

Answer 1

I would do it like this (edit: added anchors to cover most cases):

(\S+\s+|^)(\S+\s+|)here is(\s+\S+|)(\s+\S+|$)

Like this you will always have 4 groups (might have to be trimmed) with the following behavior:

1. If group 1 is empty, there was no word before (group 2 is empty too)
2. If group 2 is empty, there was only one word before (group 1)
3. If group 1 and 2 are not empty, they are the words before in order
4. If group 3 is empty, there was no word after
5. If group 4 is empty, there was only one word after
6. If group 3 and 4 are not empty, they are the words after in order

Corrected demo link