kj <no.em...@please.post> wrote: > > > For a recovering Perl-head like me it is difficult to understand > why Python's re module offers both match and search. Why not just > use search with a beginning-of-string anchor? I find it particularly > puzzling because I have this (possibly mistaken) idea that the > Python design philosophy tends towards minimalism, a sort of Occam's > razor, when it comes to language entities; i.e. having re.match > along with re.search seems to me like an "unnecessary multiplication > of entities". What am I missing? > RTFM?
http://docs.python.org/library/re.html#matching-vs-searching says: > Note that match may differ from search even when using a regular > expression beginning with '^': '^' matches only at the start of the > string, or in MULTILINE mode also immediately following a newline. The > match operation succeeds only if the pattern matches at the start of > the string regardless of mode, or at the starting position given by > the optional pos argument regardless of whether a newline precedes > it. So, for example: >>> re.compile("c").match("abcdef", 2) <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x0000000002C09B90> >>> re.compile("^c").search("abcdef", 2) >>> The ^ anchors you to the start of the string (or start of line in multiline mode) even if you specify a non-zero position. The match method just tells you if the pattern matches at the specified starting position regardless of whether it is the start of the string. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
