Carl Banks wrote:
On Jul 1, 10:56 am, 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?
It always seemed redundant to me also (notwithstanding Duncan Booth's
explanation of slight semantic differences). However, I find myself
using re.match much more often than re.search, so perhaps in this case
a "second obvious way" is justified.
re.match is anchored at a certain position, whereas re.search isn't. The
re module doesn't support Perl's \G anchor.
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