Help on module re:

NAME

    re - Support for regular expressions (RE).

FILE

    /usr/lib64/python2.7/re.py

DESCRIPTION

    This module provides regular expression matching operations similar to

    those found in Perl.  It supports both 8-bit and Unicode strings; both

    the pattern and the strings being processed can contain null bytes and

    characters outside the US ASCII range.

    Regular expressions can contain both special and ordinary characters.

    Most ordinary characters, like "A", "a", or "0", are the simplest

    regular expressions; they simply match themselves.  You can

    concatenate ordinary characters, so last matches the string 'last'.

    The special characters are:

        "."      Matches any character except a newline.

        "^"      Matches the start of the string.

        "$"      Matches the end of the string or just before the newline at

                 the end of the string.

        "*"      Matches 0 or more (greedy) repetitions of the preceding RE.

                 Greedy means that it will match as many repetitions as possible.

        "+"      Matches 1 or more (greedy) repetitions of the preceding RE.

        "?"      Matches 0 or 1 (greedy) of the preceding RE.

        *?,+?,?? Non-greedy versions of the previous three special characters.

        {m,n}    Matches from m to n repetitions of the preceding RE.

        {m,n}?   Non-greedy version of the above.

        "\\"     Either escapes special characters or signals a special sequence.

        []       Indicates a set of characters.

                 A "^" as the first character indicates a complementing set.

        "|"      A|B, creates an RE that will match either A or B.

        (...)    Matches the RE inside the parentheses.

                 The contents can be retrieved or matched later in the string.

        (?iLmsux) Set the I, L, M, S, U, or X flag for the RE (see below).

        (?:...)  Non-grouping version of regular parentheses.

        (?P<name>...) The substring matched by the group is accessible by name.

        (?P=name)     Matches the text matched earlier by the group named name.

        (?#...)  A comment; ignored.

        (?=...)  Matches if ... matches next, but doesn't consume the string.

        (?!...)  Matches if ... doesn't match next.

        (?<=...) Matches if preceded by ... (must be fixed length).

        (?<!...) Matches if not preceded by ... (must be fixed length).

        (?(id/name)yes|no) Matches yes pattern if the group with id/name matched,

                           the (optional) no pattern otherwise.

Help on function compile in module re:

compile(pattern, flags=0)

    Compile a regular expression pattern, returning a pattern object.

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