Extract only first match using python regular expression

Question

I have a string as follows:

course_name = \"Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)\"

I want to extract only

Answer 1

You can use str.replace() :

>>> course_name = "Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)"
>>> course_name.replace('(PGCPRM) ','')
'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)'

edit: if you want to replace the word before (Online) you need regex and a positive look-behind:

>>> re.sub(r'(\(\w+\) )(?=\(Online\))','',course_name)
'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)'

Or if you want to remove the first parentheses use following :

>>> re.sub(r'(\(\w+\) ).*?','',course_name)
'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)'

and for extract it use re.search :

>>> re.search(r'(\(.*?\))',course_name).group(0)
'(PGCPRM)'