import re string1 = 'NAME is foo' string2 = 'GAME is bar' re.findall(r'NAME|GAME(\D*)',str1) Expected output is it should work for either of the keyword and produce the output accordingly like for string1 it should be 'is foo' and for string2 it should be 'is bar'.
use a non-capturing regex group
re.findall(r'(?:NAME|GAME)(\D*)', str1) One more approach
items =['NAME is foo' , 'GAME is bar'] for item in items: print(re.findall(r'(?<=NAME|GAME)\s(.*)',item)) output
['is foo'] ['is bar'] Here is an explanation of the regex pattern:
(?<=NAME|GAME) Look for characters after 'NAME' or 'GAME' (look-behind assertion) \s After space (you can include this in the look-behind as (?<=NAME |GAME ) as well) (.*) Capturing group (what you are actually looking to capture) 
(?:NAME|GAME)?
positive look-behind out of intuition. Is there distinct advantage of using non-capture group instead of a positive look-behind? When I check the timings (on the sample given here) I get 1.36 µs ± 18.4 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each) with positive look-behind & 1.38 µs ± 29.4 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each) with non-capture group.