New submission from alec resnick <aresnick...@gmail.com>: I recently learned about named groups in Python regular expressions. Almost all the documentation I've found online explains what they are and give a simple example of how to use them. I was trying to use the variables outside of the original regex, later in the code. Nowhere in the documentation I found after a couple hours of searching was it mentioned that named groups can only be backreferenced _within_ the pattern.
In particular, the sections at http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/#SECTION000530000000000000000 and the description of the (?P<name>) behavior at http://docs.python.org/library/re.html could be modified to make it clear that the named capture does not create a variable usable outside of the pattern. I would be happy to alter the documentation appropriately. ---------- assignee: georg.brandl components: Documentation messages: 79417 nosy: aresnick, georg.brandl severity: normal status: open title: Behavior of backreferences to named groups in regular expressions unclear type: feature request versions: Python 2.6 _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue4882> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
