TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable

[TheLummen]

import re

def rearrange_name(name):
    result = re.search(r"^([\w .]*), ([\w .])$", name)
    return "{} {}".format(result[2], result[1])

When I import from the directory the rearrange_name method and run rearrange_name("Lovelace, Ada") I get the following error:
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable

Any insights on how to actually solve this ?

[Gribouillis]

You are getting this message because result is None, so you are trying to access None[2] and Python does not allow that.

[TheLummen]

Thank you ! Can you please give me a working example ?
I'm quite new to this and been studying the Google IT automation with Python on Coursera and on one of the videos I replicated the above code and got the error. It has been frustrating.

Also I need to import from the above script to a unit test script and things are not working out !

from unitest_1 import rearrange_name
import unittest

class TestRearrange(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_basic(self):
        testcase = "Lovelace, Ada"
        expected = "Ada Lovelace"
        self.assertEqual(rearrange_name(testcase), expected)

unittest.main()

[snippsat]

This part ([\w .]) only matches a single character.
It should be ([\w .]*) to match the full name part after the comma.

import re

def rearrange_name(name):
    result = re.search(r"^([\w .]*), ([\w .]*)$", name)
    if result is None:
        return name
    return f"{result.group(2)} {result.group(1)}"

name = "Lovelace, Ada"
print(rearrange_name(name))

Output:
Ada Lovelace

import unittest
from re_name import rearrange_name

class TestRearrange(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_basic(self):
        testcase = "Lovelace, Ada"
        expected = "Ada Lovelace"
        self.assertEqual(rearrange_name(testcase), expected)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

Output:
λ python test_names.py
Ada Lovelace
.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.000s

OK

Also depend on the task this may be ok,or you may need to do to more testes.
As names also can contain apostrophes or hyphens.

testcase = "O'Neill, Eugene"
expected = "Eugene O'Neill"

[TheLummen]

Thank you ! It works.