python: getting substring within element in list

row=['alex','liza','hello **world**','blah']
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i do i get everything in row[2] that is between the ** characters?

You could do it by hand and search for the * , but regex work too.

print re.search(r'\*\*(.*)\*\*', 'hello **world**').group(1) # prints 'world'

You need to know exactly what you're looking for with regex, so think about what **asd**dfe** and similar edge cases should return.

import re
print re.findall(r"\*\*(.*)\*\*", row[2])

will give you a list of every match in row[2] which is between **. Fine tune the regex as necessary

Let's say that you don't know which element has the stars, you could use this:

row=['alex','liza','hello **world**','blah']
for staritem in (item for item in row if '**' in item):
    print(staritem)
    _,_, staritem = staritem.partition('**')
    staritem,_,_ = staritem.partition('**')
    print(staritem)

row[2].strip('*')

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