How to extract the substring between two markers?

>>> s = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'
>>> start = s.find('AAA') + 3
>>> end = s.find('ZZZ', start)
>>> s[start:end]
'1234'

Then you can use regexps with the re module as well, if you want, but that's not necessary in your case.

Using regular expressions - documentation for further reference

import re

text = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'

m = re.search('AAA(.+?)ZZZ', text)
if m:
    found = m.group(1)

# found: 1234

or:

import re

text = 'gfgfdAAA1234ZZZuijjk'

try:
    found = re.search('AAA(.+?)ZZZ', text).group(1)
except AttributeError:
    # AAA, ZZZ not found in the original string
    found = '' # apply your error handling

# found: 1234

regular expression

import re

re.search(r"(?<=AAA).*?(?=ZZZ)", your_text).group(0)

The above as-is will fail with an AttributeError if there are no "AAA" and "ZZZ" in your_text

string methods

your_text.partition("AAA")[2].partition("ZZZ")[0]

The above will return an empty string if either "AAA" or "ZZZ" don't exist in your_text.

PS Python Challenge?