The particular hangup I faced when using regex was with this URL: http://vi.ebaydesc.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemD...

>>> x = re.compile('(?:(item|t|hr)=(\d+))')

>>> x.findall(url)

[('item', '290277158797'), ('t', '1227377775000')]

I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the hr value. I started messing around with regex again, but no luck so far.

I can do the same with Python's string methods:

>>> hr_start = url.find('hr=')

>>> hr_end = url.find('&',url.find('hr='),len(url))

>>> url[hr_start:hr_end]

'hr=http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40'

It's just messy as hell, it'd be nice to do everything in one swoop.