Regular Expressions: Regexes in Python (Part 1)

A (Very Brief) History of Regular Expressions

In 1951, mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene described the concept of a regular language, a language that is recognizable by a finite automaton and formally expressible using regular expressions. In the mid-1960s, computer science pioneer Ken Thompson, one of the original designers of Unix, implemented pattern matching in the QED text editor using Kleene’s notation.

Since then, regexes have appeared in many programming languages, editors, and other tools as a means of determining whether a string matches a specified pattern. Python, Java, and Perl all support regex functionality, as do most Unix tools and many text editors.

The re Module

Regex functionality in Python resides in a module named re. The re module contains many useful functions and methods, most of which you’ll learn about in the next tutorial in this series.

For now, you’ll focus predominantly on one function, re.search().

re.search(<regex>, <string>)

Scans a string for a regex match.

re.search(<regex>, <string>) scans <string> looking for the first location where the pattern <regex> matches. If a match is found, then re.search() returns a match object. Otherwise, it returns None.

re.search() takes an optional third <flags> argument that you’ll learn about at the end of this tutorial.

How to Import re.search()

Because search() resides in the re module, you need to import it before you can use it. One way to do this is to import the entire module and then use the module name as a prefix when calling the function:

import re
re.search(...)

Alternatively, you can import the function from the module by name and then refer to it without the module name prefix:

from re import search
search(...)

You’ll always need to import re.search() by one means or another before you’ll be able to use it.

The examples in the remainder of this tutorial will assume the first approach shown—importing the re module and then referring to the function with the module name prefix: re.search(). For the sake of brevity, the import re statement will usually be omitted, but remember that it’s always necessary.

For more information on importing from modules and packages, check out Python Modules and Packages—An Introduction.

First Pattern-Matching Example

Now that you know how to gain access to re.search(), you can give it a try:

 1>>> s = 'foo123bar'
 2
 3>>> # One last reminder to import!
 4>>> import re
 5
 6>>> re.search('123', s)
 7<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='123'>

Here, the search pattern <regex> is 123 and <string> is s. The returned match object appears on line 7. Match objects contain a wealth of useful information that you’ll explore soon.

For the moment, the important point is that re.search() did in fact return a match object rather than None. That tells you that it found a match. In other words, the specified <regex> pattern 123 is present in s.

A match object is truthy, so you can use it in a Boolean context like a conditional statement:

>>> if re.search('123', s):
...     print('Found a match.')
... else:
...     print('No match.')
...
Found a match.

The interpreter displays the match object as <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='123'>. This contains some useful information.

span=(3, 6) indicates the portion of <string> in which the match was found. This means the same thing as it would in slice notation:

>>> s[3:6]
'123'

In this example, the match starts at character position 3 and extends up to but not including position 6.

match='123' indicates which characters from <string> matched.

This is a good start. But in this case, the <regex> pattern is just the plain string '123'. The pattern matching here is still just character-by-character comparison, pretty much the same as the in operator and .find() examples shown earlier. The match object helpfully tells you that the matching characters were '123', but that’s not much of a revelation since those were exactly the characters you searched for.

You’re just getting warmed up.

Python Regex Metacharacters

The real power of regex matching in Python emerges when <regex> contains special characters called metacharacters. These have a unique meaning to the regex matching engine and vastly enhance the capability of the search.

Consider again the problem of how to determine whether a string contains any three consecutive decimal digit characters.

In a regex, a set of characters specified in square brackets ([]) makes up a character class. This metacharacter sequence matches any single character that is in the class, as demonstrated in the following example:

>>> s = 'foo123bar'
>>> re.search('[0-9][0-9][0-9]', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='123'>

[0-9] matches any single decimal digit character—any character between '0' and '9', inclusive. The full expression [0-9][0-9][0-9] matches any sequence of three decimal digit characters. In this case, s matches because it contains three consecutive decimal digit characters, '123'.

These strings also match:

>>> re.search('[0-9][0-9][0-9]', 'foo456bar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='456'>

>>> re.search('[0-9][0-9][0-9]', '234baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='234'>

>>> re.search('[0-9][0-9][0-9]', 'qux678')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='678'>

On the other hand, a string that doesn’t contain three consecutive digits won’t match:

>>> print(re.search('[0-9][0-9][0-9]', '12foo34'))
None

With regexes in Python, you can identify patterns in a string that you wouldn’t be able to find with the in operator or with string methods.

Take a look at another regex metacharacter. The dot (.) metacharacter matches any character except a newline, so it functions like a wildcard:

>>> s = 'foo123bar'
>>> re.search('1.3', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='123'>

>>> s = 'foo13bar'
>>> print(re.search('1.3', s))
None

In the first example, the regex 1.3 matches '123' because the '1' and '3' match literally, and the . matches the '2'. Here, you’re essentially asking, “Does s contain a '1', then any character (except a newline), then a '3'?” The answer is yes for 'foo123bar' but no for 'foo13bar'.

These examples provide a quick illustration of the power of regex metacharacters. Character class and dot are but two of the metacharacters supported by the re module. There are many more. Next, you’ll explore them fully.

Metacharacters That Match a Single Character

The metacharacter sequences in this section try to match a single character from the search string. When the regex parser encounters one of these metacharacter sequences, a match happens if the character at the current parsing position fits the description that the sequence describes.

[]

Specifies a specific set of characters to match.

Characters contained in square brackets ([]) represent a character class—an enumerated set of characters to match from. A character class metacharacter sequence will match any single character contained in the class.

You can enumerate the characters individually like this:

>>> re.search('ba[artz]', 'foobarqux')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='bar'>
>>> re.search('ba[artz]', 'foobazqux')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='baz'>

The metacharacter sequence [artz] matches any single 'a', 'r', 't', or 'z' character. In the example, the regex ba[artz] matches both 'bar' and 'baz' (and would also match 'baa' and 'bat').

A character class can also contain a range of characters separated by a hyphen (-), in which case it matches any single character within the range. For example, [a-z] matches any lowercase alphabetic character between 'a' and 'z', inclusive:

>>> re.search('[a-z]', 'FOObar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='b'>

[0-9] matches any digit character:

>>> re.search('[0-9][0-9]', 'foo123bar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 5), match='12'>

In this case, [0-9][0-9] matches a sequence of two digits. The first portion of the string 'foo123bar' that matches is '12'.

[0-9a-fA-F] matches any hexadecimal digit character:

>>> re.search('[0-9a-fA-f]', '--- a0 ---')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 5), match='a'>

Here, [0-9a-fA-F] matches the first hexadecimal digit character in the search string, 'a'.

You can complement a character class by specifying ^ as the first character, in which case it matches any character that isn’t in the set. In the following example, [^0-9] matches any character that isn’t a digit:

>>> re.search('[^0-9]', '12345foo')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(5, 6), match='f'>

Here, the match object indicates that the first character in the string that isn’t a digit is 'f'.

If a ^ character appears in a character class but isn’t the first character, then it has no special meaning and matches a literal '^' character:

>>> re.search('[#:^]', 'foo^bar:baz#qux')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='^'>

As you’ve seen, you can specify a range of characters in a character class by separating characters with a hyphen. What if you want the character class to include a literal hyphen character? You can place it as the first or last character or escape it with a backslash (\):

>>> re.search('[-abc]', '123-456')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='-'>
>>> re.search('[abc-]', '123-456')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='-'>
>>> re.search('[ab\-c]', '123-456')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='-'>

If you want to include a literal ']' in a character class, then you can place it as the first character or escape it with backslash:

>>> re.search('[]]', 'foo[1]')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(5, 6), match=']'>
>>> re.search('[ab\]cd]', 'foo[1]')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(5, 6), match=']'>

Other regex metacharacters lose their special meaning inside a character class:

>>> re.search('[)*+|]', '123*456')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='*'>
>>> re.search('[)*+|]', '123+456')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='+'>

As you saw in the table above, * and + have special meanings in a regex in Python. They designate repetition, which you’ll learn more about shortly. But in this example, they’re inside a character class, so they match themselves literally.

dot (.)

Specifies a wildcard.

The . metacharacter matches any single character except a newline:

>>> re.search('foo.bar', 'fooxbar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='fooxbar'>

>>> print(re.search('foo.bar', 'foobar'))
None
>>> print(re.search('foo.bar', 'foo\nbar'))
None

As a regex, foo.bar essentially means the characters 'foo', then any character except newline, then the characters 'bar'. The first string shown above, 'fooxbar', fits the bill because the . metacharacter matches the 'x'.

The second and third strings fail to match. In the last case, although there’s a character between 'foo' and 'bar', it’s a newline, and by default, the . metacharacter doesn’t match a newline. There is, however, a way to force . to match a newline, which you’ll learn about at the end of this tutorial.

\w
\W

Match based on whether a character is a word character.

\w matches any alphanumeric word character. Word characters are uppercase and lowercase letters, digits, and the underscore (_) character, so \w is essentially shorthand for [a-zA-Z0-9_]:

>>> re.search('\w', '#(.a$@&')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='a'>
>>> re.search('[a-zA-Z0-9_]', '#(.a$@&')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='a'>

In this case, the first word character in the string '#(.a$@&' is 'a'.

\W is the opposite. It matches any non-word character and is equivalent to [^a-zA-Z0-9_]:

>>> re.search('\W', 'a_1*3Qb')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='*'>
>>> re.search('[^a-zA-Z0-9_]', 'a_1*3Qb')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='*'>

Here, the first non-word character in 'a_1*3!b' is '*'.

\d
\D

Match based on whether a character is a decimal digit.

\d matches any decimal digit character. \D is the opposite. It matches any character that isn’t a decimal digit:

>>> re.search('\d', 'abc4def')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='4'>

>>> re.search('\D', '234Q678')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='Q'>

\d is essentially equivalent to [0-9], and \D is equivalent to [^0-9].

\s
\S

Match based on whether a character represents whitespace.

\s matches any whitespace character:

>>> re.search('\s', 'foo\nbar baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='\n'>

Note that, unlike the dot wildcard metacharacter, \s does match a newline character.

\S is the opposite of \s. It matches any character that isn’t whitespace:

>>> re.search('\S', '  \n foo  \n  ')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 5), match='f'>

Again, \s and \S consider a newline to be whitespace. In the example above, the first non-whitespace character is 'f'.

The character class sequences \w, \W, \d, \D, \s, and \S can appear inside a square bracket character class as well:

>>> re.search('[\d\w\s]', '---3---')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='3'>
>>> re.search('[\d\w\s]', '---a---')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='a'>
>>> re.search('[\d\w\s]', '--- ---')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match=' '>

In this case, [\d\w\s] matches any digit, word, or whitespace character. And since \w includes \d, the same character class could also be expressed slightly shorter as [\w\s].

Escaping Metacharacters

Occasionally, you’ll want to include a metacharacter in your regex, except you won’t want it to carry its special meaning. Instead, you’ll want it to represent itself as a literal character.

backslash (\)

Removes the special meaning of a metacharacter.

As you’ve just seen, the backslash character can introduce special character classes like word, digit, and whitespace. There are also special metacharacter sequences called anchors that begin with a backslash, which you’ll learn about below.

When it’s not serving either of these purposes, the backslash escapes metacharacters. A metacharacter preceded by a backslash loses its special meaning and matches the literal character instead. Consider the following examples:

 1>>> re.search('.', 'foo.bar')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 1), match='f'>
 3
 4>>> re.search('\.', 'foo.bar')
 5<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='.'>

In the <regex> on line 1, the dot (.) functions as a wildcard metacharacter, which matches the first character in the string ('f'). The . character in the <regex> on line 4 is escaped by a backslash, so it isn’t a wildcard. It’s interpreted literally and matches the '.' at index 3 of the search string.

Using backslashes for escaping can get messy. Suppose you have a string that contains a single backslash:

>>> s = r'foo\bar'
>>> print(s)
foo\bar

Now suppose you want to create a <regex> that will match the backslash between 'foo' and 'bar'. The backslash is itself a special character in a regex, so to specify a literal backslash, you need to escape it with another backslash. If that’s that case, then the following should work:

>>> re.search('\\', s)

Not quite. This is what you get if you try it:

>>> re.search('\\', s)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#3>", line 1, in <module>
    re.search('\\', s)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\re.py", line 182, in search
    return _compile(pattern, flags).search(string)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\re.py", line 301, in _compile
    p = sre_compile.compile(pattern, flags)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\sre_compile.py", line 562, in compile
    p = sre_parse.parse(p, flags)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\sre_parse.py", line 848, in parse
    source = Tokenizer(str)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\sre_parse.py", line 231, in __init__
    self.__next()
  File "C:\Python36\lib\sre_parse.py", line 245, in __next
    self.string, len(self.string) - 1) from None
sre_constants.error: bad escape (end of pattern) at position 0

Oops. What happened?

The problem here is that the backslash escaping happens twice, first by the Python interpreter on the string literal and then again by the regex parser on the regex it receives.

Here’s the sequence of events:

1. The Python interpreter is the first to process the string literal '\\'. It interprets that as an escaped backslash and passes only a single backslash to re.search().
2. The regex parser receives just a single backslash, which isn’t a meaningful regex, so the messy error ensues.

There are two ways around this. First, you can escape both backslashes in the original string literal:

>>> re.search('\\\\', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='\\'>

Doing so causes the following to happen:

1. The interpreter sees '\\\\' as a pair of escaped backslashes. It reduces each pair to a single backslash and passes '\\' to the regex parser.
2. The regex parser then sees \\ as one escaped backslash. As a <regex>, that matches a single backslash character. You can see from the match object that it matched the backslash at index 3 in s as intended. It’s cumbersome, but it works.

The second, and probably cleaner, way to handle this is to specify the <regex> using a raw string:

>>> re.search(r'\\', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 4), match='\\'>

This suppresses the escaping at the interpreter level. The string '\\' gets passed unchanged to the regex parser, which again sees one escaped backslash as desired.

It’s good practice to use a raw string to specify a regex in Python whenever it contains backslashes.

Anchors

Anchors are zero-width matches. They don’t match any actual characters in the search string, and they don’t consume any of the search string during parsing. Instead, an anchor dictates a particular location in the search string where a match must occur.

^
\A

Anchor a match to the start of <string>.

When the regex parser encounters ^ or \A, the parser’s current position must be at the beginning of the search string for it to find a match.

In other words, regex ^foo stipulates that 'foo' must be present not just any old place in the search string, but at the beginning:

>>> re.search('^foo', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
>>> print(re.search('^foo', 'barfoo'))
None

\A functions similarly:

>>> re.search('\Afoo', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
>>> print(re.search('\Afoo', 'barfoo'))
None

^ and \A behave slightly differently from each other in MULTILINE mode. You’ll learn more about MULTILINE mode below in the section on flags.

$
\Z

Anchor a match to the end of <string>.

When the regex parser encounters $ or \Z, the parser’s current position must be at the end of the search string for it to find a match. Whatever precedes $ or \Z must constitute the end of the search string:

>>> re.search('bar$', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='bar'>
>>> print(re.search('bar$', 'barfoo'))
None

>>> re.search('bar\Z', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='bar'>
>>> print(re.search('bar\Z', 'barfoo'))
None

As a special case, $ (but not \Z) also matches just before a single newline at the end of the search string:

>>> re.search('bar$', 'foobar\n')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='bar'>

In this example, 'bar' isn’t technically at the end of the search string because it’s followed by one additional newline character. But the regex parser lets it slide and calls it a match anyway. This exception doesn’t apply to \Z.

$ and \Z behave slightly differently from each other in MULTILINE mode. See the section below on flags for more information on MULTILINE mode.

\b

Anchors a match to a word boundary.

\b asserts that the regex parser’s current position must be at the beginning or end of a word. A word consists of a sequence of alphanumeric characters or underscores ([a-zA-Z0-9_]), the same as for the \w character class:

 1>>> re.search(r'\bbar', 'foo bar')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
 3>>> re.search(r'\bbar', 'foo.bar')
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
 5
 6>>> print(re.search(r'\bbar', 'foobar'))
 7None
 8
 9>>> re.search(r'foo\b', 'foo bar')
10<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
11>>> re.search(r'foo\b', 'foo.bar')
12<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
13
14>>> print(re.search(r'foo\b', 'foobar'))
15None

In the above examples, a match happens on lines 1 and 3 because there’s a word boundary at the start of 'bar'. This isn’t the case on line 6, so the match fails there.

Similarly, there are matches on lines 9 and 11 because a word boundary exists at the end of 'foo', but not on line 14.

Using the \b anchor on both ends of the <regex> will cause it to match when it’s present in the search string as a whole word:

>>> re.search(r'\bbar\b', 'foo bar baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
>>> re.search(r'\bbar\b', 'foo(bar)baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>

>>> print(re.search(r'\bbar\b', 'foobarbaz'))
None

This is another instance in which it pays to specify the <regex> as a raw string, as the above examples have done.

Because '\b' is an escape sequence for both string literals and regexes in Python, each use above would need to be double escaped as '\\b' if you didn’t use raw strings. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but raw strings are tidier.

\B

Anchors a match to a location that isn’t a word boundary.

\B does the opposite of \b. It asserts that the regex parser’s current position must not be at the start or end of a word:

 1>>> print(re.search(r'\Bfoo\B', 'foo'))
 2None
 3>>> print(re.search(r'\Bfoo\B', '.foo.'))
 4None
 5
 6>>> re.search(r'\Bfoo\B', 'barfoobaz')
 7<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='foo'>

In this case, a match happens on line 7 because no word boundary exists at the start or end of 'foo' in the search string 'barfoobaz'.

Quantifiers

A quantifier metacharacter immediately follows a portion of a <regex> and indicates how many times that portion must occur for the match to succeed.

*

Matches zero or more repetitions of the preceding regex.

For example, a* matches zero or more 'a' characters. That means it would match an empty string, 'a', 'aa', 'aaa', and so on.

Consider these examples:

 1>>> re.search('foo-*bar', 'foobar')                     # Zero dashes
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='foobar'>
 3>>> re.search('foo-*bar', 'foo-bar')                    # One dash
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo-bar'>
 5>>> re.search('foo-*bar', 'foo--bar')                   # Two dashes
 6<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='foo--bar'>

On line 1, there are zero '-' characters between 'foo' and 'bar'. On line 3 there’s one, and on line 5 there are two. The metacharacter sequence -* matches in all three cases.

You’ll probably encounter the regex .* in a Python program at some point. This matches zero or more occurrences of any character. In other words, it essentially matches any character sequence up to a line break. (Remember that the . wildcard metacharacter doesn’t match a newline.)

In this example, .* matches everything between 'foo' and 'bar':

>>> re.search('foo.*bar', '# foo $qux@grault % bar #')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(2, 23), match='foo $qux@grault % bar'>

Did you notice the span= and match= information contained in the match object?

Until now, the regexes in the examples you’ve seen have specified matches of predictable length. Once you start using quantifiers like *, the number of characters matched can be quite variable, and the information in the match object becomes more useful.

You’ll learn more about how to access the information stored in a match object in the next tutorial in the series.

+

Matches one or more repetitions of the preceding regex.

This is similar to *, but the quantified regex must occur at least once:

 1>>> print(re.search('foo-+bar', 'foobar'))              # Zero dashes
 2None
 3>>> re.search('foo-+bar', 'foo-bar')                    # One dash
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo-bar'>
 5>>> re.search('foo-+bar', 'foo--bar')                   # Two dashes
 6<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='foo--bar'>

Remember from above that foo-*bar matched the string 'foobar' because the * metacharacter allows for zero occurrences of '-'. The + metacharacter, on the other hand, requires at least one occurrence of '-'. That means there isn’t a match on line 1 in this case.

?

Matches zero or one repetitions of the preceding regex.

Again, this is similar to * and +, but in this case there’s only a match if the preceding regex occurs once or not at all:

 1>>> re.search('foo-?bar', 'foobar')                     # Zero dashes
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='foobar'>
 3>>> re.search('foo-?bar', 'foo-bar')                    # One dash
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo-bar'>
 5>>> print(re.search('foo-?bar', 'foo--bar'))            # Two dashes
 6None

In this example, there are matches on lines 1 and 3. But on line 5, where there are two '-' characters, the match fails.

Here are some more examples showing the use of all three quantifier metacharacters:

>>> re.match('foo[1-9]*bar', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='foobar'>
>>> re.match('foo[1-9]*bar', 'foo42bar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='foo42bar'>

>>> print(re.match('foo[1-9]+bar', 'foobar'))
None
>>> re.match('foo[1-9]+bar', 'foo42bar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='foo42bar'>

>>> re.match('foo[1-9]?bar', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='foobar'>
>>> print(re.match('foo[1-9]?bar', 'foo42bar'))
None

This time, the quantified regex is the character class [1-9] instead of the simple character '-'.

*?
+?
??

The non-greedy (or lazy) versions of the *, +, and ? quantifiers.

When used alone, the quantifier metacharacters *, +, and ? are all greedy, meaning they produce the longest possible match. Consider this example:

>>> re.search('<.*>', '%<foo> <bar> <baz>%')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(1, 18), match='<foo> <bar> <baz>'>

The regex <.*> effectively means:

• A '<' character
• Then any sequence of characters
• Then a '>' character

But which '>' character? There are three possibilities:

1. The one just after 'foo'
2. The one just after 'bar'
3. The one just after 'baz'

Since the * metacharacter is greedy, it dictates the longest possible match, which includes everything up to and including the '>' character that follows 'baz'. You can see from the match object that this is the match produced.

If you want the shortest possible match instead, then use the non-greedy metacharacter sequence *?:

>>> re.search('<.*?>', '%<foo> <bar> <baz>%')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(1, 6), match='<foo>'>

In this case, the match ends with the '>' character following 'foo'.

There are lazy versions of the + and ? quantifiers as well:

 1>>> re.search('<.+>', '%<foo> <bar> <baz>%')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(1, 18), match='<foo> <bar> <baz>'>
 3>>> re.search('<.+?>', '%<foo> <bar> <baz>%')
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(1, 6), match='<foo>'>
 5
 6>>> re.search('ba?', 'baaaa')
 7<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 2), match='ba'>
 8>>> re.search('ba??', 'baaaa')
 9<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 1), match='b'>

The first two examples on lines 1 and 3 are similar to the examples shown above, only using + and +? instead of * and *?.

The last examples on lines 6 and 8 are a little different. In general, the ? metacharacter matches zero or one occurrences of the preceding regex. The greedy version, ?, matches one occurrence, so ba? matches 'b' followed by a single 'a'. The non-greedy version, ??, matches zero occurrences, so ba?? matches just 'b'.

{m}

Matches exactly m repetitions of the preceding regex.

This is similar to * or +, but it specifies exactly how many times the preceding regex must occur for a match to succeed:

>>> print(re.search('x-{3}x', 'x--x'))                # Two dashes
None

>>> re.search('x-{3}x', 'x---x')                      # Three dashes
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='x---x'>

>>> print(re.search('x-{3}x', 'x----x'))              # Four dashes
None

Here, x-{3}x matches 'x', followed by exactly three instances of the '-' character, followed by another 'x'. The match fails when there are fewer or more than three dashes between the 'x' characters.

{m,n}

Matches any number of repetitions of the preceding regex from m to n, inclusive.

In the following example, the quantified <regex> is -{2,4}. The match succeeds when there are two, three, or four dashes between the 'x' characters but fails otherwise:

>>> for i in range(1, 6):
...     s = f"x{'-' * i}x"
...     print(f'{i}  {s:10}', re.search('x-{2,4}x', s))
...
1  x-x        None
2  x--x       <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 4), match='x--x'>
3  x---x      <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='x---x'>
4  x----x     <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='x----x'>
5  x-----x    None

Omitting m implies a lower bound of 0, and omitting n implies an unlimited upper bound:

If you omit all of m, n, and the comma, then the curly braces no longer function as metacharacters. {} matches just the literal string '{}':

>>> re.search('x{}y', 'x{}y')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 4), match='x{}y'>

In fact, to have any special meaning, a sequence with curly braces must fit one of the following patterns in which m and n are nonnegative integers:

• {m,n}
• {m,}
• {,n}
• {,}

Otherwise, it matches literally:

>>> re.search('x{foo}y', 'x{foo}y')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='x{foo}y'>
>>> re.search('x{a:b}y', 'x{a:b}y')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='x{a:b}y'>
>>> re.search('x{1,3,5}y', 'x{1,3,5}y')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 9), match='x{1,3,5}y'>
>>> re.search('x{foo,bar}y', 'x{foo,bar}y')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 11), match='x{foo,bar}y'>

Later in this tutorial, when you learn about the DEBUG flag, you’ll see how you can confirm this.

{m,n}?

The non-greedy (lazy) version of {m,n}.

{m,n} will match as many characters as possible, and {m,n}? will match as few as possible:

>>> re.search('a{3,5}', 'aaaaaaaa')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='aaaaa'>

>>> re.search('a{3,5}?', 'aaaaaaaa')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='aaa'>

In this case, a{3,5} produces the longest possible match, so it matches five 'a' characters. a{3,5}? produces the shortest match, so it matches three.

Grouping Constructs and Backreferences

Grouping constructs break up a regex in Python into subexpressions or groups. This serves two purposes:

1. Grouping: A group represents a single syntactic entity. Additional metacharacters apply to the entire group as a unit.
2. Capturing: Some grouping constructs also capture the portion of the search string that matches the subexpression in the group. You can retrieve captured matches later through several different mechanisms.

Here’s a look at how grouping and capturing work.

(<regex>)

Defines a subexpression or group.

This is the most basic grouping construct. A regex in parentheses just matches the contents of the parentheses:

>>> re.search('(bar)', 'foo bar baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>

>>> re.search('bar', 'foo bar baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>

As a regex, (bar) matches the string 'bar', the same as the regex bar would without the parentheses.

>>> re.search('(bar)+', 'foo bar baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
>>> re.search('(bar)+', 'foo barbar baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 10), match='barbar'>
>>> re.search('(bar)+', 'foo barbarbarbar baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 16), match='barbarbarbar'>

>>> re.search('(ba[rz]){2,4}(qux)?', 'bazbarbazqux')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 12), match='bazbarbazqux'>
>>> re.search('(ba[rz]){2,4}(qux)?', 'barbar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='barbar'>

>>> re.search('(foo(bar)?)+(\d\d\d)?', 'foofoobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 9), match='foofoobar'>
>>> re.search('(foo(bar)?)+(\d\d\d)?', 'foofoobar123')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 12), match='foofoobar123'>
>>> re.search('(foo(bar)?)+(\d\d\d)?', 'foofoo123')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 9), match='foofoo123'>

>>> m = re.search('(\w+),(\w+),(\w+)', 'foo,quux,baz')
>>> m
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 12), match='foo:quux:baz'>

>>> m.groups()
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m = re.search('(\w+),(\w+),(\w+)', 'foo,quux,baz')
>>> m.groups()
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m.group(1)
'foo'
>>> m.group(2)
'quux'
>>> m.group(3)
'baz'

>>> m.group(0)
'foo,quux,baz'
>>> m.group()
'foo,quux,baz'

>>> m.groups()
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m.group(2, 3)
('quux', 'baz')
>>> m.group(3, 2, 1)
('baz', 'quux', 'foo')

>>> m.group(3, 2, 1)
('baz', 'qux', 'foo')
>>> (m.group(3), m.group(2), m.group(1))
('baz', 'qux', 'foo')

 1>>> regex = r'(\w+),\1'
 2
 3>>> m = re.search(regex, 'foo,foo')
 4>>> m
 5<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo,foo'>
 6>>> m.group(1)
 7'foo'
 8
 9>>> m = re.search(regex, 'qux,qux')
10>>> m
11<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='qux,qux'>
12>>> m.group(1)
13'qux'
14
15>>> m = re.search(regex, 'foo,qux')
16>>> print(m)
17None

>>> print(re.search('([a-z])#\1', 'd#d'))
None

>>> oct(ord('\1'))
'0o1'

>>> re.search(r'([a-z])#\1', 'd#d')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='d#d'>

>>> m = re.search('(\w+),(\w+),(\w+)', 'foo,quux,baz')
>>> m.groups()
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m.group(1, 2, 3)
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m = re.search('(?P<w1>\w+),(?P<w2>\w+),(?P<w3>\w+)', 'foo,quux,baz')
>>> m.groups()
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m.group('w1')
'foo'
>>> m.group('w3')
'baz'
>>> m.group('w1', 'w2', 'w3')
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m = re.search('(?P<w1>\w+),(?P<w2>\w+),(?P<w3>\w+)', 'foo,quux,baz')

>>> m.group('w1')
'foo'
>>> m.group(1)
'foo'

>>> m.group('w1', 'w2', 'w3')
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')
>>> m.group(1, 2, 3)
('foo', 'quux', 'baz')

>>> m = re.search(r'(\w+),\1', 'foo,foo')
>>> m
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo,foo'>
>>> m.group(1)
'foo'

>>> m = re.search(r'(?P<word>\w+),(?P=word)', 'foo,foo')
>>> m
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo,foo'>
>>> m.group('word')
'foo'

>>> m = re.match(r'(?P<num>\d+)\.(?P=num)', '135.135')
>>> m
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='135.135'>

>>> m.group('num')
'135'

>>> m = re.search('(\w+),(?:\w+),(\w+)', 'foo,quux,baz')
>>> m.groups()
('foo', 'baz')

>>> m.group(1)
'foo'
>>> m.group(2)
'baz'

regex = r'^(###)?foo(?(1)bar|baz)'

>>> re.search(regex, '###foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 9), match='###foobar'>

>>> print(re.search(regex, '###foobaz'))
None

>>> print(re.search(regex, 'foobar'))
None

>>> re.search(regex, 'foobaz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='foobaz'>

>>> regex = r'^(?P<ch>\W)?foo(?(ch)(?P=ch)|)$'

 1>>> re.search(regex, 'foo')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
 3>>> re.search(regex, '#foo#')
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='#foo#'>
 5>>> re.search(regex, '@foo@')
 6<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='@foo@'>
 7
 8>>> print(re.search(regex, '#foo'))
 9None
10>>> print(re.search(regex, 'foo@'))
11None
12>>> print(re.search(regex, '#foo@'))
13None
14>>> print(re.search(regex, '@foo#'))
15None

Lookahead and Lookbehind Assertions

Lookahead and lookbehind assertions determine the success or failure of a regex match in Python based on what is just behind (to the left) or ahead (to the right) of the parser’s current position in the search string.

Like anchors, lookahead and lookbehind assertions are zero-width assertions, so they don’t consume any of the search string. Also, even though they contain parentheses and perform grouping, they don’t capture what they match.

(?=<lookahead_regex>)

Creates a positive lookahead assertion.

(?=<lookahead_regex>) asserts that what follows the regex parser’s current position must match <lookahead_regex>:

>>> re.search('foo(?=[a-z])', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>

The lookahead assertion (?=[a-z]) specifies that what follows 'foo' must be a lowercase alphabetic character. In this case, it’s the character 'b', so a match is found.

In the next example, on the other hand, the lookahead fails. The next character after 'foo' is '1', so there isn’t a match:

>>> print(re.search('foo(?=[a-z])', 'foo123'))
None

What’s unique about a lookahead is that the portion of the search string that matches <lookahead_regex> isn’t consumed, and it isn’t part of the returned match object.

Take another look at the first example:

>>> re.search('foo(?=[a-z])', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>

The regex parser looks ahead only to the 'b' that follows 'foo' but doesn’t pass over it yet. You can tell that 'b' isn’t considered part of the match because the match object displays match='foo'.

Compare that to a similar example that uses grouping parentheses without a lookahead:

>>> re.search('foo([a-z])', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 4), match='foob'>

This time, the regex consumes the 'b', and it becomes a part of the eventual match.

Here’s another example illustrating how a lookahead differs from a conventional regex in Python:

 1>>> m = re.search('foo(?=[a-z])(?P<ch>.)', 'foobar')
 2>>> m.group('ch')
 3'b'
 4
 5>>> m = re.search('foo([a-z])(?P<ch>.)', 'foobar')
 6>>> m.group('ch')
 7'a'

In the first search, on line 1, the parser proceeds as follows:

1. The first portion of the regex, foo, matches and consumes 'foo' from the search string 'foobar'.
2. The next portion, (?=[a-z]), is a lookahead that matches 'b', but the parser doesn’t advance past the 'b'.
3. Lastly, (?P<ch>.) matches the next single character available, which is 'b', and captures it in a group named ch.

The m.group('ch') call confirms that the group named ch contains 'b'.

Compare that to the search on line 5, which doesn’t contain a lookahead:

1. As in the first example, the first portion of the regex, foo, matches and consumes 'foo' from the search string 'foobar'.
2. The next portion, ([a-z]), matches and consumes 'b', and the parser advances past 'b'.
3. Lastly, (?P<ch>.) matches the next single character available, which is now 'a'.

m.group('ch') confirms that, in this case, the group named ch contains 'a'.

(?!<lookahead_regex>)

Creates a negative lookahead assertion.

(?!<lookahead_regex>) asserts that what follows the regex parser’s current position must not match <lookahead_regex>.

Here are the positive lookahead examples you saw earlier, along with their negative lookahead counterparts:

 1>>> re.search('foo(?=[a-z])', 'foobar')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
 3>>> print(re.search('foo(?![a-z])', 'foobar'))
 4None
 5
 6>>> print(re.search('foo(?=[a-z])', 'foo123'))
 7None
 8>>> re.search('foo(?![a-z])', 'foo123')
 9<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>

The negative lookahead assertions on lines 3 and 8 stipulate that what follows 'foo' should not be a lowercase alphabetic character. This fails on line 3 but succeeds on line 8. This is the opposite of what happened with the corresponding positive lookahead assertions.

As with a positive lookahead, what matches a negative lookahead isn’t part of the returned match object and isn’t consumed.

(?<=<lookbehind_regex>)

Creates a positive lookbehind assertion.

(?<=<lookbehind_regex>) asserts that what precedes the regex parser’s current position must match <lookbehind_regex>.

In the following example, the lookbehind assertion specifies that 'foo' must precede 'bar':

>>> re.search('(?<=foo)bar', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='bar'>

This is the case here, so the match succeeds. As with lookahead assertions, the part of the search string that matches the lookbehind doesn’t become part of the eventual match.

The next example fails to match because the lookbehind requires that 'qux' precede 'bar':

>>> print(re.search('(?<=qux)bar', 'foobar'))
None

There’s a restriction on lookbehind assertions that doesn’t apply to lookahead assertions. The <lookbehind_regex> in a lookbehind assertion must specify a match of fixed length.

For example, the following isn’t allowed because the length of the string matched by a+ is indeterminate:

>>> re.search('(?<=a+)def', 'aaadef')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#72>", line 1, in <module>
    re.search('(?<=a+)def', 'aaadef')
  File "C:\Python36\lib\re.py", line 182, in search
    return _compile(pattern, flags).search(string)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\re.py", line 301, in _compile
    p = sre_compile.compile(pattern, flags)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\sre_compile.py", line 566, in compile
    code = _code(p, flags)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\sre_compile.py", line 551, in _code
    _compile(code, p.data, flags)
  File "C:\Python36\lib\sre_compile.py", line 160, in _compile
    raise error("look-behind requires fixed-width pattern")
sre_constants.error: look-behind requires fixed-width pattern

This, however, is okay:

>>> re.search('(?<=a{3})def', 'aaadef')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='def'>

Anything that matches a{3} will have a fixed length of three, so a{3} is valid in a lookbehind assertion.

(?<!<lookbehind_regex>)

Creates a negative lookbehind assertion.

(?<!<lookbehind_regex>) asserts that what precedes the regex parser’s current position must not match <lookbehind_regex>:

>>> print(re.search('(?<!foo)bar', 'foobar'))
None

>>> re.search('(?<!qux)bar', 'foobar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='bar'>

As with the positive lookbehind assertion, <lookbehind_regex> must specify a match of fixed length.

Miscellaneous Metacharacters

There are a couple more metacharacter sequences to cover. These are stray metacharacters that don’t obviously fall into any of the categories already discussed.

(?#...)

Specifies a comment.

The regex parser ignores anything contained in the sequence (?#...):

>>> re.search('bar(?#This is a comment) *baz', 'foo bar baz qux')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 11), match='bar baz'>

This allows you to specify documentation inside a regex in Python, which can be especially useful if the regex is particularly long.

Vertical bar, or pipe (|)

Specifies a set of alternatives on which to match.

An expression of the form <regex1>|<regex2>|...|<regexn> matches at most one of the specified <regexi> expressions:

>>> re.search('foo|bar|baz', 'bar')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='bar'>

>>> re.search('foo|bar|baz', 'baz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='baz'>

>>> print(re.search('foo|bar|baz', 'quux'))
None

Here, foo|bar|baz will match any of 'foo', 'bar', or 'baz'. You can separate any number of regexes using |.

Alternation is non-greedy. The regex parser looks at the expressions separated by | in left-to-right order and returns the first match that it finds. The remaining expressions aren’t tested, even if one of them would produce a longer match:

 1>>> re.search('foo', 'foograult')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
 3>>> re.search('grault', 'foograult')
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 9), match='grault'>
 5
 6>>> re.search('foo|grault', 'foograult')
 7<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>

In this case, the pattern specified on line 6, 'foo|grault', would match on either 'foo' or 'grault'. The match returned is 'foo' because that appears first when scanning from left to right, even though 'grault' would be a longer match.

You can combine alternation, grouping, and any other metacharacters to achieve whatever level of complexity you need. In the following example, (foo|bar|baz)+ means a sequence of one or more of the strings 'foo', 'bar', or 'baz':

>>> re.search('(foo|bar|baz)+', 'foofoofoo')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 9), match='foofoofoo'>
>>> re.search('(foo|bar|baz)+', 'bazbazbazbaz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 12), match='bazbazbazbaz'>
>>> re.search('(foo|bar|baz)+', 'barbazfoo')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 9), match='barbazfoo'>

In the next example, ([0-9]+|[a-f]+) means a sequence of one or more decimal digit characters or a sequence of one or more of the characters 'a-f':

>>> re.search('([0-9]+|[a-f]+)', '456')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='456'>
>>> re.search('([0-9]+|[a-f]+)', 'ffda')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 4), match='ffda'>

With all the metacharacters that the re module supports, the sky is practically the limit.

That’s All, Folks!

That completes our tour of the regex metacharacters supported by Python’s re module. (Actually, it doesn’t quite—there are a couple more stragglers you’ll learn about below in the discussion on flags.)

It’s a lot to digest, but once you become familiar with regex syntax in Python, the complexity of pattern matching that you can perform is almost limitless. These tools come in very handy when you’re writing code to process textual data.

If you’re new to regexes and want more practice working with them, or if you’re developing an application that uses a regex and you want to test it interactively, then check out the Regular Expressions 101 website. It’s seriously cool!

Supported Regular Expression Flags

The table below briefly summarizes the available flags. All flags except re.DEBUG have a short, single-letter name and also a longer, full-word name:

The following sections describe in more detail how these flags affect matching behavior.

re.I
re.IGNORECASE

Makes matching case insensitive.

When IGNORECASE is in effect, character matching is case insensitive:

 1>>> re.search('a+', 'aaaAAA')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='aaa'>
 3>>> re.search('A+', 'aaaAAA')
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(3, 6), match='AAA'>
 5
 6>>> re.search('a+', 'aaaAAA', re.I)
 7<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='aaaAAA'>
 8>>> re.search('A+', 'aaaAAA', re.IGNORECASE)
 9<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='aaaAAA'>

In the search on line 1, a+ matches only the first three characters of 'aaaAAA'. Similarly, on line 3, A+ matches only the last three characters. But in the subsequent searches, the parser ignores case, so both a+ and A+ match the entire string.

IGNORECASE affects alphabetic matching involving character classes as well:

>>> re.search('[a-z]+', 'aBcDeF')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 1), match='a'>
>>> re.search('[a-z]+', 'aBcDeF', re.I)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 6), match='aBcDeF'>

When case is significant, the longest portion of 'aBcDeF' that [a-z]+ matches is just the initial 'a'. Specifying re.I makes the search case insensitive, so [a-z]+ matches the entire string.

re.M
re.MULTILINE

Causes start-of-string and end-of-string anchors to match at embedded newlines.

By default, the ^ (start-of-string) and $ (end-of-string) anchors match only at the beginning and end of the search string:

>>> s = 'foo\nbar\nbaz'

>>> re.search('^foo', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
>>> print(re.search('^bar', s))
None
>>> print(re.search('^baz', s))
None

>>> print(re.search('foo$', s))
None
>>> print(re.search('bar$', s))
None
>>> re.search('baz$', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(8, 11), match='baz'>

In this case, even though the search string 'foo\nbar\nbaz' contains embedded newline characters, only 'foo' matches when anchored at the beginning of the string, and only 'baz' matches when anchored at the end.

If a string has embedded newlines, however, you can think of it as consisting of multiple internal lines. In that case, if the MULTILINE flag is set, the ^ and $ anchor metacharacters match internal lines as well:

• ^ matches at the beginning of the string or at the beginning of any line within the string (that is, immediately following a newline).
• $ matches at the end of the string or at the end of any line within the string (immediately preceding a newline).

The following are the same searches as shown above:

>>> s = 'foo\nbar\nbaz'
>>> print(s)
foo
bar
baz

>>> re.search('^foo', s, re.MULTILINE)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
>>> re.search('^bar', s, re.MULTILINE)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
>>> re.search('^baz', s, re.MULTILINE)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(8, 11), match='baz'>

>>> re.search('foo$', s, re.M)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>
>>> re.search('bar$', s, re.M)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
>>> re.search('baz$', s, re.M)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(8, 11), match='baz'>

In the string 'foo\nbar\nbaz', all three of 'foo', 'bar', and 'baz' occur at either the start or end of the string or at the start or end of a line within the string. With the MULTILINE flag set, all three match when anchored with either ^ or $.

 1>>> s = 'foo\nbar\nbaz'
 2
 3>>> re.search('^bar', s, re.MULTILINE)
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
 5>>> re.search('bar$', s, re.MULTILINE)
 6<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='bar'>
 7
 8>>> print(re.search('\Abar', s, re.MULTILINE))
 9None
10>>> print(re.search('bar\Z', s, re.MULTILINE))
11None

re.S
re.DOTALL

Causes the dot (.) metacharacter to match a newline.

Remember that by default, the dot metacharacter matches any character except the newline character. The DOTALL flag lifts this restriction:

 1>>> print(re.search('foo.bar', 'foo\nbar'))
 2None
 3>>> re.search('foo.bar', 'foo\nbar', re.DOTALL)
 4<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo\nbar'>
 5>>> re.search('foo.bar', 'foo\nbar', re.S)
 6<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo\nbar'>

In this example, on line 1 the dot metacharacter doesn’t match the newline in 'foo\nbar'. On lines 3 and 5, DOTALL is in effect, so the dot does match the newline. Note that the short name of the DOTALL flag is re.S, not re.D as you might expect.

re.X
re.VERBOSE

Allows inclusion of whitespace and comments within a regex.

The VERBOSE flag specifies a few special behaviors:

• The regex parser ignores all whitespace unless it’s within a character class or escaped with a backslash.

• If the regex contains a # character that isn’t contained within a character class or escaped with a backslash, then the parser ignores it and all characters to the right of it.

What’s the use of this? It allows you to format a regex in Python so that it’s more readable and self-documenting.

Here’s an example showing how you might put this to use. Suppose you want to parse phone numbers that have the following format:

• Optional three-digit area code, in parentheses
• Optional whitespace
• Three-digit prefix
• Separator (either '-' or '.')
• Four-digit line number

The following regex does the trick:

>>> regex = r'^(\(\d{3}\))?\s*\d{3}[-.]\d{4}$'

>>> re.search(regex, '414.9229')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='414.9229'>
>>> re.search(regex, '414-9229')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='414-9229'>
>>> re.search(regex, '(712)414-9229')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 13), match='(712)414-9229'>
>>> re.search(regex, '(712) 414-9229')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 14), match='(712) 414-9229'>

But r'^(\(\d{3}\))?\s*\d{3}[-.]\d{4}$' is an eyeful, isn’t it? Using the VERBOSE flag, you can write the same regex in Python like this instead:

>>> regex = r'''^               # Start of string
...             (\(\d{3}\))?    # Optional area code
...             \s*             # Optional whitespace
...             \d{3}           # Three-digit prefix
...             [-.]            # Separator character
...             \d{4}           # Four-digit line number
...             $               # Anchor at end of string
...             '''

>>> re.search(regex, '414.9229', re.VERBOSE)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='414.9229'>
>>> re.search(regex, '414-9229', re.VERBOSE)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='414-9229'>
>>> re.search(regex, '(712)414-9229', re.X)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 13), match='(712)414-9229'>
>>> re.search(regex, '(712) 414-9229', re.X)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 14), match='(712) 414-9229'>

The re.search() calls are the same as those shown above, so you can see that this regex works the same as the one specified earlier. But it’s less difficult to understand at first glance.

Note that triple quoting makes it particularly convenient to include embedded newlines, which qualify as ignored whitespace in VERBOSE mode.

When using the VERBOSE flag, be mindful of whitespace that you do intend to be significant. Consider these examples:

 1>>> re.search('foo bar', 'foo bar')
 2<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo bar'>
 3
 4>>> print(re.search('foo bar', 'foo bar', re.VERBOSE))
 5None
 6
 7>>> re.search('foo\ bar', 'foo bar', re.VERBOSE)
 8<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo bar'>
 9>>> re.search('foo[ ]bar', 'foo bar', re.VERBOSE)
10<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='foo bar'>

After all you’ve seen to this point, you may be wondering why on line 4 the regex foo bar doesn’t match the string 'foo bar'. It doesn’t because the VERBOSE flag causes the parser to ignore the space character.

To make this match as expected, escape the space character with a backslash or include it in a character class, as shown on lines 7 and 9.

As with the DOTALL flag, note that the VERBOSE flag has a non-intuitive short name: re.X, not re.V.

re.DEBUG

Displays debugging information.

The DEBUG flag causes the regex parser in Python to display debugging information about the parsing process to the console:

>>> re.search('foo.bar', 'fooxbar', re.DEBUG)
LITERAL 102
LITERAL 111
LITERAL 111
ANY None
LITERAL 98
LITERAL 97
LITERAL 114
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 7), match='fooxbar'>

When the parser displays LITERAL nnn in the debugging output, it’s showing the ASCII code of a literal character in the regex. In this case, the literal characters are 'f', 'o', 'o' and 'b', 'a', 'r'.

Here’s a more complicated example. This is the phone number regex shown in the discussion on the VERBOSE flag earlier:

>>> regex = r'^(\(\d{3}\))?\s*\d{3}[-.]\d{4}$'

>>> re.search(regex, '414.9229', re.DEBUG)
AT AT_BEGINNING
MAX_REPEAT 0 1
  SUBPATTERN 1 0 0
    LITERAL 40
    MAX_REPEAT 3 3
      IN
        CATEGORY CATEGORY_DIGIT
    LITERAL 41
MAX_REPEAT 0 MAXREPEAT
  IN
    CATEGORY CATEGORY_SPACE
MAX_REPEAT 3 3
  IN
    CATEGORY CATEGORY_DIGIT
IN
  LITERAL 45
  LITERAL 46
MAX_REPEAT 4 4
  IN
    CATEGORY CATEGORY_DIGIT
AT AT_END
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 8), match='414.9229'>

This looks like a lot of esoteric information that you’d never need, but it can be useful. See the Deep Dive below for a practical application.

Deep Dive: Debugging Regular Expression Parsing

As you know from above, the metacharacter sequence {m,n} indicates a specific number of repetitions. It matches anywhere from m to n repetitions of what precedes it:

Python

>>> re.search('x[123]{2,4}y', 'x222y')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='x222y'>

You can verify this with the DEBUG flag:

Python

>>> re.search('x[123]{2,4}y', 'x222y', re.DEBUG)
LITERAL 120
MAX_REPEAT 2 4
  IN
    LITERAL 49
    LITERAL 50
    LITERAL 51
LITERAL 121
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='x222y'>

MAX_REPEAT 2 4 confirms that the regex parser recognizes the metacharacter sequence {2,4} and interprets it as a range quantifier.

But, as noted previously, if a pair of curly braces in a regex in Python contains anything other than a valid number or numeric range, then it loses its special meaning.

You can verify this also:

Python

>>> re.search('x[123]{foo}y', 'x222y', re.DEBUG)
LITERAL 120
IN
  LITERAL 49
  LITERAL 50
  LITERAL 51
LITERAL 123
LITERAL 102
LITERAL 111
LITERAL 111
LITERAL 125
LITERAL 121

You can see that there’s no MAX_REPEAT token in the debug output. The LITERAL tokens indicate that the parser treats {foo} literally and not as a quantifier metacharacter sequence. 123, 102, 111, 111, and 125 are the ASCII codes for the characters in the literal string '{foo}'.

Information displayed by the DEBUG flag can help you troubleshoot by showing you how the parser is interpreting your regex.

Curiously, the re module doesn’t define a single-letter version of the DEBUG flag. You could define your own if you wanted to:

>>> import re
>>> re.D
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: module 're' has no attribute 'D'

>>> re.D = re.DEBUG
>>> re.search('foo', 'foo', re.D)
LITERAL 102
LITERAL 111
LITERAL 111
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='foo'>

But this might be more confusing than helpful, as readers of your code might misconstrue it as an abbreviation for the DOTALL flag. If you did make this assignment, it would be a good idea to document it thoroughly.

re.A
re.ASCII
re.U
re.UNICODE
re.L
re.LOCALE

Specify the character encoding used for parsing of special regex character classes.

Several of the regex metacharacter sequences (\w, \W, \b, \B, \d, \D, \s, and \S) require you to assign characters to certain classes like word, digit, or whitespace. The flags in this group determine the encoding scheme used to assign characters to these classes. The possible encodings are ASCII, Unicode, or according to the current locale.

You had a brief introduction to character encoding and Unicode in the tutorial on Strings and Character Data in Python, under the discussion of the ord() built-in function. For more in-depth information, check out these resources:

• Unicode & Character Encodings in Python: A Painless Guide
• Python’s Unicode Support

Why is character encoding so important in the context of regexes in Python? Here’s a quick example.

You learned earlier that \d specifies a single digit character. The description of the \d metacharacter sequence states that it’s equivalent to the character class [0-9]. That happens to be true for English and Western European languages, but for most of the world’s languages, the characters '0' through '9' don’t represent all or even any of the digits.

For example, here’s a string that consists of three Devanagari digit characters:

>>> s = '\u0967\u096a\u096c'
>>> s
'१४६'

For the regex parser to properly account for the Devanagari script, the digit metacharacter sequence \d must match each of these characters as well.

The Unicode Consortium created Unicode to handle this problem. Unicode is a character-encoding standard designed to represent all the world’s writing systems. All strings in Python 3, including regexes, are Unicode by default.

So then, back to the flags listed above. These flags help to determine whether a character falls into a given class by specifying whether the encoding used is ASCII, Unicode, or the current locale:

• re.U and re.UNICODE specify Unicode encoding. Unicode is the default, so these flags are superfluous. They’re mainly supported for backward compatibility.
• re.A and re.ASCII force a determination based on ASCII encoding. If you happen to be operating in English, then this is happening anyway, so the flag won’t affect whether or not a match is found.
• re.L and re.LOCALE make the determination based on the current locale. Locale is an outdated concept and isn’t considered reliable. Except in rare circumstances, you’re not likely to need it.

Using the default Unicode encoding, the regex parser should be able to handle any language you throw at it. In the following example, it correctly recognizes each of the characters in the string '१४६' as a digit:

>>> s = '\u0967\u096a\u096c'
>>> s
'१४६'
>>> re.search('\d+', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='१४६'>

Here’s another example that illustrates how character encoding can affect a regex match in Python. Consider this string:

>>> s = 'sch\u00f6n'
>>> s
'schön'

'schön' (the German word for pretty or nice) contains the 'ö' character, which has the 16-bit hexadecimal Unicode value 00f6. This character isn’t representable in traditional 7-bit ASCII.

If you’re working in German, then you should reasonably expect the regex parser to consider all of the characters in 'schön' to be word characters. But take a look at what happens if you search s for word characters using the \w character class and force an ASCII encoding:

>>> re.search('\w+', s, re.ASCII)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='sch'>

When you restrict the encoding to ASCII, the regex parser recognizes only the first three characters as word characters. The match stops at 'ö'.

On the other hand, if you specify re.UNICODE or allow the encoding to default to Unicode, then all the characters in 'schön' qualify as word characters:

>>> re.search('\w+', s, re.UNICODE)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='schön'>
>>> re.search('\w+', s)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match='schön'>

The ASCII and LOCALE flags are available in case you need them for special circumstances. But in general, the best strategy is to use the default Unicode encoding. This should handle any world language correctly.

Combining <flags> Arguments in a Function Call

Flag values are defined so that you can combine them using the bitwise OR (|) operator. This allows you to specify several flags in a single function call:

>>> re.search('^bar', 'FOO\nBAR\nBAZ', re.I|re.M)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='BAR'>

This re.search() call uses bitwise OR to specify both the IGNORECASE and MULTILINE flags at once.

Setting and Clearing Flags Within a Regular Expression

In addition to being able to pass a <flags> argument to most re module function calls, you can also modify flag values within a regex in Python. There are two regex metacharacter sequences that provide this capability.

(?<flags>)

Sets flag value(s) for the duration of a regex.

Within a regex, the metacharacter sequence (?<flags>) sets the specified flags for the entire expression.

The value of <flags> is one or more letters from the set a, i, L, m, s, u, and x. Here’s how they correspond to the re module flags:

The (?<flags>) metacharacter sequence as a whole matches the empty string. It always matches successfully and doesn’t consume any of the search string.

The following examples are equivalent ways of setting the IGNORECASE and MULTILINE flags:

>>> re.search('^bar', 'FOO\nBAR\nBAZ\n', re.I|re.M)
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='BAR'>

>>> re.search('(?im)^bar', 'FOO\nBAR\nBAZ\n')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 7), match='BAR'>

Note that a (?<flags>) metacharacter sequence sets the given flag(s) for the entire regex no matter where you place it in the expression:

>>> re.search('foo.bar(?s).baz', 'foo\nbar\nbaz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 11), match='foo\nbar\nbaz'>

>>> re.search('foo.bar.baz(?s)', 'foo\nbar\nbaz')
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 11), match='foo\nbar\nbaz'>

In the above examples, both dot metacharacters match newlines because the DOTALL flag is in effect. This is true even when (?s) appears in the middle or at the end of the expression.

As of Python 3.7, it’s deprecated to specify (?<flags>) anywhere in a regex other than at the beginning:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.version
'3.8.0 (default, Oct 14 2019, 21:29:03) \n[GCC 7.4.0]'

>>> re.search('foo.bar.baz(?s)', 'foo\nbar\nbaz')
<stdin>:1: DeprecationWarning: Flags not at the start
    of the expression 'foo.bar.baz(?s)'
<re.Match object; span=(0, 11), match='foo\nbar\nbaz'>

It still produces the appropriate match, but you’ll get a warning message.

(?<set_flags>-<remove_flags>:<regex>)

Sets or removes flag value(s) for the duration of a group.

(?<set_flags>-<remove_flags>:<regex>) defines a non-capturing group that matches against <regex>. For the <regex> contained in the group, the regex parser sets any flags specified in <set_flags> and clears any flags specified in <remove_flags>.

Values for <set_flags> and <remove_flags> are most commonly i, m, s or x.

In the following example, the IGNORECASE flag is set for the specified group:

>>> re.search('(?i:foo)bar', 'FOObar')
<re.Match object; span=(0, 6), match='FOObar'>

This produces a match because (?i:foo) dictates that the match against 'FOO' is case insensitive.

Now contrast that with this example:

>>> print(re.search('(?i:foo)bar', 'FOOBAR'))
None

As in the previous example, the match against 'FOO' would succeed because it’s case insensitive. But once outside the group, IGNORECASE is no longer in effect, so the match against 'BAR' is case sensitive and fails.

Here’s an example that demonstrates turning a flag off for a group:

>>> print(re.search('(?-i:foo)bar', 'FOOBAR', re.IGNORECASE))
None

Again, there’s no match. Although re.IGNORECASE enables case-insensitive matching for the entire call, the metacharacter sequence (?-i:foo) turns off IGNORECASE for the duration of that group, so the match against 'FOO' fails.

As of Python 3.7, you can specify u, a, or L as <set_flags> to override the default encoding for the specified group:

>>> s = 'sch\u00f6n'
>>> s
'schön'

>>> # Requires Python 3.7 or later
>>> re.search('(?a:\w+)', s)
<re.Match object; span=(0, 3), match='sch'>
>>> re.search('(?u:\w+)', s)
<re.Match object; span=(0, 5), match='schön'>

You can only set encoding this way, though. You can’t remove it:

>>> re.search('(?-a:\w+)', s)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/re.py", line 199, in search
    return _compile(pattern, flags).search(string)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/re.py", line 302, in _compile
    p = sre_compile.compile(pattern, flags)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/sre_compile.py", line 764, in compile
    p = sre_parse.parse(p, flags)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/sre_parse.py", line 948, in parse
    p = _parse_sub(source, state, flags & SRE_FLAG_VERBOSE, 0)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/sre_parse.py", line 443, in _parse_sub
    itemsappend(_parse(source, state, verbose, nested + 1,
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/sre_parse.py", line 805, in _parse
    flags = _parse_flags(source, state, char)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/sre_parse.py", line 904, in _parse_flags
    raise source.error(msg)
re.error: bad inline flags: cannot turn off flags 'a', 'u' and 'L' at
position 4

u, a, and L are mutually exclusive. Only one of them may appear per group.