Matchobject instances support the following methods and attributes:
None.
If the regular expression uses the (?P<name>...) syntax,
the index arguments may also be strings identifying groups by
their group name.
A moderately complicated example:
m = re.match(r"(?P<int>\d+)\.(\d*)", '3.14')After performing this match,
m.group(1) is '3', as is m.group('int').
m.group(2) is '14'.
None. If the tuple
would only be one element long, a string will be returned instead.
None if group exists but
did not contribute to the match. For a match object
m, and a group g that did contribute to the match, the
substring matched by group g (equivalent to m.group(g)) is
m.string[m.start(g):m.end(g)]Note that
m.start(group) will equal m.end(group) if
group matched a null string. For example, after m =
re.search('b(c?)', 'cba'), m.start(0) is 1, m.end(0) is
2, m.start(1) and m.end(1) are both 2, and
m.start(2) raises an IndexError exception.
(start(group), end(group)).
Note that if group did not contribute to the match, this is
(None, None).
search or match function. This is the index into the
string at which the regex engine started looking for a match.
search or match function. This is the index into the
string beyond which the regex engine will not go.
match() or search() method
produced this MatchObject instance.
match() or search().
See Also:
Jeffrey Friedl, Mastering Regular Expressions, O'Reilly. The Python material in this book dates from before the re module, but it covers writing good regular expression patterns in great detail.
guido@CNRI.Reston.Va.US