Regex help (python)

[matmatmat]

Can anyone give me an regex to get the URL to a webpage in html:

<a href="test.html">click</a>
<a href='test.html'>click</a>

that can be used with the python re module, I'm not sure if i should check for a match then split the line or to do something else?

[leblancmeneses]

Regex.Match(input, @"href\s*=\s*\"(?<urlOfInterest>[^"]+)\"", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Multiline)
what i've done here is forget about tags and look for attributes of specific interest.
\s* means zero or more white spaces, because multiline is set it will also match newlines
[^"]+ negative character group that means match anything that is not a double quote.


for perfect matching i would actually write grammar rule using my library
npeg.codeplex.com

other ways people accomplish this is to build a sax parser and just apply regex in attributes section.

[ghostdog74]

its better to use a HTML parser.

[myrtle1908]

BeautifulSoup is excellent and very easy to use ... http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/