Python Pocket Reference, Second Edition

The re Pattern-Matching Module

The re module is the standard regular expression-matching interface (new in 1.5). Regular expression (RE) patterns are specified as strings. This module must be imported.^[11]

Module Functions

compile(pattern [, flags])

Compile an RE pattern string into a regular expression object, for later matching. flags (combinable by bitwise | operator):

I or IGNORECASE or (?i)

Case-insensitive matching.

L or LOCALE or (?L)

Makes \w, \W, \b, \B, \s, \S, \d, and \D dependent on the current 8-bit locale (default is 7-bit U.S. ASCII).

M or MULTILINE or (?m)

Matches to each new line, not whole string.

S or DOTALL or (?s)

“.” matches all characters, including newline.

U or UNICODE or (?u)

Makes \w, \W, \b, \B, \s, \S, \d, and \D dependent on Unicode character properties (new in 2.0).

X or VERBOSE or (?x)

Ignore whitespace in the pattern, outside character sets.

match(pattern, string [, flags])

If zero or more characters at start of string match the pattern string, returns a corresponding MatchObject instance, or None if no match. flags as in compile.

search(pattern, string [, flags])

Scans through string for a location matching pattern; returns a corresponding MatchObject instance, or None if no match. flags as in compile.

split(pattern, string [, maxsplit=0])

Splits string by occurrences of pattern. If capturing ( ) are used in pattern, occurrences of patterns or subpatterns are also returned.

sub(pattern, repl, string [, count=0])

Returns string obtained by replacing the (first ...