Python regex to match identical city names but formatted differently

In a Python regex, I am trying to compare identical city names that are formatted differently (uppercase/lowercase, separated by spaces or hyphens, characters with different cases). For example, "Paris" and "paris", "New York" and "neW-york" should match, but not "Paris" and "New York".

my code :

import re
import unicodedata


class CompareCities:
    def __init__(self):
        self.city_regex = re.compile(
            r"^(([A-Z]+[a-z]*)|([a-z]+[A-Z]*))[ -]?(([A-Z]+[a-z]*)|([a-z]+[A-Z]*))$"
        )

    def compare(self, city1, city2):

        city1_normalized = self._normalize(city1)
        city2_normalized = self._normalize(city2)

        return city1_normalized == city2_normalized

    def _normalize(self, city):
        city = (
            self.city_regex.match(city).group()
            if self.city_regex.match(city)
            else False
        )

        if not city:
            return False

        city = (
            unicodedata.normalize("NFD", city)
            .encode("ascii", "ignore")
            .decode("utf-8")
            .upper()
        )
        return city


compare_cities = CompareCities()
result = compare_cities.compare("New York", "nEw-yOrk")

if result:
    print("same city")
else:
    print("not same city")

the probleme , for example , "New York" and "nEw-yOrk" should match, but not.

thank you for help

If you can use something else than regex, you could try instead to process the strings, by passing them all to lowercase using .lower() and removing any delimiter characters, such as spaces and hyphens, with .replace().

There are likely some cases where two different cities differ only from a space or a hyphen, but depending on the application this might be a very small issue.

def compare(city1, city2):
    city1_normalized = city1.casefold().split()  # city1  should be the actual Geographical city like Paris, New York, New Delhi
    city2_normalized = city2.casefold().split('-') # city2 can be a mixture of upper lower case and hyphens
    return city1_normalized == city2_normalized

compare("New York", "nEw-yOrk")
#True

Well, first I would suggest making the city names all lowercase (.lower) and then replacing all "-"s with " "s or the other way around and then doing the check—no need for overcomplicated regex.