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

Based on your clarification, this becomes a bit more complicated. The solution below deals with scenarios where the searched pattern may in fact also be in the two preceding or two subsequent words.

line = "Parking here is horrible, here is great here is mediocre here is here is "
print line
pattern = "here is"
r = re.search(pattern, line, re.IGNORECASE)
output = []
if r:
    while line:
        before, match, line = line.partition(pattern)
        if match:
            if not output:
                before = before.split()[-2:]
            else:    
                before = ' '.join([pattern, before]).split()[-2:]
            after = line.split()[:2]
            output.append((before, after))
print output

Output from my example would be:

[(['Parking'], ['horrible,', 'here']), (['is', 'horrible,'], ['great', 'here']), (['is', 'great'], ['mediocre', 'here']), (['is', 'mediocre'], ['here', 'is']), (['here', 'is'], [])]