I would like to write a regex for searching for the existence of some words, but their order of appearance doesn't matter.
For example, search for "Tim" and "stupid". My regex is Tim.*stupid|stupid.*Tim
. But is it possible to write a simpler regex (e.g. so that the two words appear just once in the regex itself)?
See this regex:
/^(?=.*Tim)(?=.*stupid).+/
Regex explanation:
^
Asserts position at start of string.(?=.*Tim)
Asserts that "Tim" is present in the string.(?=.*stupid)
Asserts that "stupid" is present in the string..+
Now that our phrases are present, this string is valid. Go ahead and use .+
or - .++
to match the entire string.To use lookaheads more exclusively, you can add another (?=.*<to_assert>)
group. The entire regex can be simplified as /^(?=.*Tim).*stupid/
.
See a regex demo!
>>> import re
>>> str ="""
... Tim is so stupid.
... stupid Tim!
... Tim foobar barfoo.
... Where is Tim?"""
>>> m = re.findall(r'^(?=.*Tim)(?=.*stupid).+$', str, re.MULTILINE)
>>> m
['Tim is so stupid.', 'stupid Tim!']
>>> m = re.findall(r'^(?=.*Tim).*stupid', str, re.MULTILINE)
>>> m
['Tim is so stupid.', 'stupid Tim!']
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