Python-get string between to characters

Question

I need to one give me the string between ~ and ^.
I have a string like this:

~~~~ ABC ^ DEF ^ HGK > LMN ^  

I

Answer 1

Without regex:

>>> "".join([x for x in target if x.isalpha() or x == ' ']).split()
['ABC', 'DEF', 'HGK', 'LMN']

This takes space and alpha characters and creates a new string then splits it into words in a list

Here is my exact code from python 3 command line:

>>> target = ' ~~~~ ABC ^ DEF ^ HGK > LMN ^  '
>>> xx = "".join([x for x in target if x.isalpha() or x == ' ']).split()
>>> xx
['ABC', 'DEF', 'HGK', 'LMN']
>>> 

Answer 2

I'm not sure exactly what result is desired, but perhaps this?

>>> matchObj = re.findall(r'~+(.*?)\^', target)
>>> print(matchObj)
[' ABC ']

Answer 3

here is my solution:

your input:

In [12]: target = ' ~~~~ ABC ^ DEF ^ HGK > LMN ^  '

replace all the symbols or delimiters with ' ' and split the result

In [13]: b = re.sub(r'[^\w]', ' ', target).split()

In [14]: b
Out[14]: ['ABC', 'DEF', 'HGK', 'LMN']

Answer 4

Your idea of using a lazy quantifier is good, but that still doesn't necessarily give you the shortest possible match - only the shortest match from the current position of the regex engine. If you want to disallow the start/end separators from being part of the match, you need to explicitly exclude them from the list of valid characters. A negated character class comes in handy here.

target = ' ~~~~ ABC ^ DEF ^ HGK > LMN ^  '
matches = re.findall(r'~([^~^]*)\^', target)
print matches