Extracting User Input Information

Introduction

In this project, you will learn how to extract integers from user input using a Python script and regular expressions. This project is designed to help you understand the basics of regular expressions and how to apply them in a practical programming task.

👀 Preview

~/project/$ python find_int.py
a1b2c3d4
1 2 3 4
~/project/$ python find_int.py
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
~/project/$ python find_int.py
12 3ad5
12 3 5

🎯 Tasks

In this project, you will learn:

• How to create a Python script to handle user input
• How to use regular expressions to find and extract integers from a string
• How to process and format the extracted integers for output

🏆 Achievements

After completing this project, you will be able to:

• Write a Python script that can extract numeric data from user input
• Understand the fundamentals of regular expressions and how to apply them in Python
• Demonstrate your ability to combine Python programming and regular expression techniques to solve a practical problem

Skills Graph

Set Up the Python Script

In this step, you will create a new Python script file and import the necessary module.

1. Open a text editor and create a new file named find_int.py in the /home/labex/project directory.
2. At the beginning of the file, import the re (regular expression) module. This module will be used to extract integers from the user's input.

import re

Define the Function to Extract Integers

In this step, you will create a function that takes a user's input and extracts all the integers from it.

1. Define a function called extract_integers that takes a single argument user_input.

def extract_integers(user_input):
    ## Code will be added in the next step
    pass

Implement the Integer Extraction Logic

In this step, you will implement the logic to extract integers from the user's input using regular expressions.

1. Inside the extract_integers function, use the re.findall() method to find all the sequences of digits (integers) in the user_input string.

def extract_integers(user_input):
    integers = re.findall(r"\d+", user_input)
    return " ".join(integers)

The r"\d+" regular expression pattern matches one or more digits (0-9). The re.findall() function returns a list of all the matched integers.

2. The function then joins the extracted integers into a space-separated string and returns it.

Handle user input and print the result

In this final step, you will prompt the user for input, call the extract_integers function, and print the result.

1. Add the following code at the end of the find_int.py file:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    user_input = input()
    result = extract_integers(user_input)
    print(result)

This code checks if the script is being run directly (not imported as a module) and then prompts the user for input, calls the extract_integers function with the user's input, and prints the resulting space-separated string of integers.

Now, your find_int.py script is complete. You can run the script and test it with different user inputs.

~/project$ python find_int.py
a1b2c3d4
1 2 3 4
~/project$ python find_int.py
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
~/project$ python find_int.py
12 3ad5
12 3 5

Congratulations! You have completed the project of extracting integers from user input using a Python script and regular expressions.

Summary

Congratulations! You have completed this project. You can practice more labs in LabEx to improve your skills.