FAQ: Introduction to Regular Expressions - Ranges

Frequently Asked Questions Python FAQ
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This community-built FAQ covers the “Ranges” exercise from the lesson “Introduction to Regular Expressions”.

Paths and Courses
This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

Practical Data Cleaning

FAQs on the exercise Ranges

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3

Is the range in alphabetic order? Like if I had [a-d] You could enter “c” and it would work, but if you put “z” it wouldn’t? I would also assume that it would be very similar with numbers

5

Yes that’s the correct interpretation for using a range in a character class for regular expressions :wink:, a single lowercase later from a to d inclusive (a, b, c, d). Python’s guide to this is at the following-
https://docs.python.org/3/howto/regex.html#regex-howto

But the same expressions are covered in many places (sometimes in a nicer way if you’re trying to get it sorted quickly).

6

@tgrtim Oops! Silly me for not reading the title hahah. :sweat_smile: should be more awake when answering.

1 Like
7

I’m sharing this, hope it would be helpful.

[a-zAD61-48] will match either a-z or A or D or 6 or 1-4 or 8 of one char long (case sensitive).

eg.
matches a
matches d
matches z
matches A
matches D
NOT matches B
matches 6
matches 1
matches 4
matches 3
NOT matches 5
matches 8

8

I don’t understand how to solve the problem using ranges when I can only use 1 range set. [a-c][o-l] doesn’t match anything in the test strings. The interpreter only allows me to use 1 range .

9

What’s the intended solution here? What does this have to do with ranges?

10

This one is a bit annoying. No idea if its the intended solution or not, but I used
..[bgk]
It feels like this should be done with several ranges but as others have said the interpreter only allows one. If anyone else has another way I’d love to hear it

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11

I agree, frustrating indeed. In case anyone is struggling, the solution I got is [b-g][k-v][b-k]

12

I agree also - found the intention here less than clear - wasn’t expecting to use a multiple range approach

13

Each set (anything inside a pair of square brackets) will only match one character.

All the strings in the exercise are 3 characters in length, therefore, you need to use 3 sets.

A couple of previous posts have included incorrect or imprecise answers:

  • [a-c][o-l] – the second set doesn’t make sense. The range needs to be in alphabetical order, i.e. [l-o]
  • [b-g][k-v][b-k] – the first two sets are imprecise. Their ranges can be narrower, i.e [c-e][l-u]
14

Thank you for the reply - got it.

1 Like