python regex for multiple search patterns with alternation not working-CodePudding

I am trying to fetch the number from below texts

text = 'was the 3001st most popular'
text1 = 'was the 2733rd most popular'
text3 = 'was the 3072nd most popular'
text4 = 'was the 4747th most popular'

I want it to return the numbers as in 3001, 2733, 3072, 4747 respectively from each line

i am using below

r = re.search('was the (.*)nd|was the (.*)st|was the (.*)rd|was the (.*)th', text).groups()
reg = next((item for item in r if item is not None), 'Not-Found')

But it's producing 4747th mo, 3001st mo etc

CodePudding user response：

You can simplify you pattern to look for digits (\d ) followed by either of st, rd, nd, th:

texts = [text, text1, text3, text4]

for t in texts:
    r = re.search("(\d )(st|rd|nd|th)", t).group(1)
    print(r)

Output: