Gary Wessle: >tx = "now 04/30/2006 then" >data = re.compile('(\d{2})/\1/\1\1', re.IGNORECASE) >d = data.search(tx) >print d > >Nono >I was expecting 04/30/2006
You should expect: NameError: name 're' is not defined > what went wrong? \1 matches the content of the first group, which is '04'. It doesn't match '30', '20' and '06'. Also, you'll need to use a raw string, or backslash your backslashes. >>> import re >>> tx = "now 04/04/0404 then" >>> data = re.compile(r'(\d{2})/\1/\1\1', re.IGNORECASE) >>> d = data.search(tx) >>> print d <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x01287F60> -- René Pijlman -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list