Matthew Barnett added the comment:
"*" and the other quantifiers ("+", "?" and "{...}") operate on the preceding
_item_, not the entire preceding expression. For example, "ab*" means "a"
followed by zero or more repeats of "b".
You're not allowed to use multiple quantifiers together. The proper way is to
use the non-capturing "(?:...)".
It's too late to change that because some of them already have a special
meaning when used after another quantifier: "a*?" is a lazy quantifier, as are
"a+?", "a??" and "a{1,4}?".
Many other regex implementations, including the "regex" module, use an
additional "+" to signify a possessive quantifier: "a*+", "a++", "a?+" and
"a{1,4}+".
That just leaves the additional "*", which is treated as an error in all the
other regex implementations that I'm aware of.
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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue27800>
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