re.search

[Rares Vernica]

Hi,

Isn't the following code supposed to return ('1994')?

re.search('(\d{4})?', '4 1994').groups()

(None,)

Thanks,
Ray

[James Stroud]

Rares Vernica wrote:

Hi,

Isn't the following code supposed to return ('1994')?

>>> re.search('(\d{4})?', '4 1994').groups()

(None,)

Thanks,
Ray

The ? is allowing it to not match before it finds the 1994.

Note:

py> re.search('(\d{4})?', '1994 4').groups()
('1994',)

James

--
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/

[Fredrik Lundh]

Rares Vernica wrote:

Isn't the following code supposed to return ('1994')?

>>> re.search('(\d{4})?', '4 1994').groups()

(None,)

it's supposed to return the first thing that matches your pattern, which,
in this case, is the empty string at the beginning of the target string.

if you want to look for groups of four digits, remove the "?"

</F>