Python regex: find words and emoticons

Question

I want to find matches between a tweet and a list of strings containing words, phrases, and emoticons. Here is my code:

words = [':)','and i','sleeping','... :)','! <3','facebook'] regex = re.compile(r'%s|(:(|:))+' % '\b|\b'.join(words), flags=re.IGNORECASE)

I keep receiving this error:

error: unbalanced parenthesis

Apparently there is something wrong with the code and it cannot match emoticons. Any idea how to fix it?

Answer 1

I tried the below and it stopped throwing the error:

words = [':)','and i','sleeping','... :)','! <3','facebook']