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

Pretty simple:

In [8]: course_name
Out[8]: 'Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)'

In [9]: print re.sub('\([A-Z]+\)\s*', '', course_name)
Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (Online)

In [17]: print re.search('\(([A-Z]+)\)\s*', course_name).groups()[0]
PGCPRM

Answer 2

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)'

Answer 3

To extract value within first parenthesis

>>> course_name = "Post Graduate Certificate Programme in Retail Management (PGCPRM) (Online)"
>>> x = re.search(r'\(.*?\)',course_name).group()
>>> x
'(PGCPRM)'

And then to replace

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