In regular expressions, the OR operator is denoted by the vertical bar |. It is used to match either one pattern or another pattern.
Here's an example of using the OR operator in the "re" module in Python:
import retext = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."pattern = "quick|lazy"# Use the search() function to find the first occurrence of either "quick" or "lazy" in the textmatch = re.search(pattern, text)if match: print("Pattern found:", match.group())else: print("Pattern not found.") |
In this example, we are searching for either the word "quick" or the word "lazy" in the text using the OR operator (|) in the regular expression pattern. The search() function will find the first occurrence of either pattern in the text, and return a match object.
If a match is found, the program will print out the matched pattern using the group() method. In this case, since the word "quick" appears first in the text, that is the pattern that will be matched and printed.
Note that the OR operator can be used with more complex patterns as well, such as combining multiple patterns with parentheses to create more complex sub-patterns.