Regular Expression Pocket Reference

Name

Module Functions

Synopsis

The re module defines the following functions and one exception.

compile(pattern [, flags])

Return a regular expression object with the optional mode modifiers, flags.

match(pattern, string [, flags])

Search for pattern at starting position of string, and return a match object or None if no match.

search(pattern, string [, flags])

Search for pattern in string, and return a match object or None if no match.

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

Split string on pattern. Limit the number of splits to maxsplit. Submatches from capturing parentheses are also returned.

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

Return a string with all or up to count occurrences of pattern in string replaced with repl. repl may be either a string or a function that takes a match object argument.

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

Perform sub( ) but return a tuple of the new string and the number of replacements.

findall(pattern, string)

Return matches of pattern in string. If pattern has capturing groups, returns a list of submatches or a list of tuples of submatches.

finditer(pattern, string)

Return an iterator over matches of pattern in string. For each match, the iterator returns a match object.

escape(string)

Return string with alphanumerics backslashed so that string can be matched literally.

exception error

Exception raised if an error occurs during compilation or matching. This is common if a string passed to a function is not a valid regular expression.