John Machin wrote: > Devan L wrote: > > John Machin wrote: > > > >>Aahz wrote: > >> > >>>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > >>>John Machin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> > >>> > >>>>Search for r'^something' can never be better/faster than match for > >>>>r'something', and with a dopey implementation of search [which Python's > >>>>re is NOT] it could be much worse. So please don't tell newbies to > >>>>search for r'^something'. > >>> > >>> > >>>You're somehow getting mixed up in thinking that "^" is some kind of > >>>"not" operator -- it's the start of line anchor in this context. > >> > >>I can't imagine where you got that idea from. > >> > >>If I change "[which Python's re is NOT]" to "[Python's re's search() is > >>not dopey]", does that help you? > >> > >>The point was made in a context where the OP appeared to be reading a > >>line at a time and parsing it, and re.compile(r'something').match() > >>would do the job; re.compile(r'^something').search() will do the job too > >>-- BECAUSE ^ means start of line anchor -- but somewhat redundantly, and > >>very inefficiently in the failing case with dopey implementations of > >>search() (which apply match() at offsets 0, 1, 2, .....). > > > > > > I don't see much difference. > > and I didn't expect that you would -- like I wrote above: "Python's re's > search() is not dopey".
Your wording makes it hard to distinguish what exactly is "dopey". -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
