Find string between two substrings

s = "123123STRINGabcabc"

def find_between( s, first, last ):
    try:
        start = s.index( first ) + len( first )
        end = s.index( last, start )
        return s[start:end]
    except ValueError:
        return ""

def find_between_r( s, first, last ):
    try:
        start = s.rindex( first ) + len( first )
        end = s.rindex( last, start )
        return s[start:end]
    except ValueError:
        return ""


print find_between( s, "123", "abc" )
print find_between_r( s, "123", "abc" )

gives:

123STRING
STRINGabc

I thought it should be noted - depending on what behavior you need, you can mix index and rindex calls or go with one of the above versions (it's equivalent of regex (.*) and (.*?) groups).

import re

s = 'asdf=5;iwantthis123jasd'
result = re.search('asdf=5;(.*)123jasd', s)
print(result.group(1))

start = 'asdf=5;'
end = '123jasd'
s = 'asdf=5;iwantthis123jasd'
print s[s.find(start)+len(start):s.rfind(end)]

gives

iwantthis