"+" does not match?

[Frank Stajano]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 21:52:26 +0200, Thomas Thiele
<thiele at muc.das-werk.de> wrote:

>>>> import regex 
>
>>>> s1 = "c++test/"
>>>> s2 = "c++test/Derivetest.c++"
>>>> regex.match(s1,s2)
>-1
>
>but if I substitude the "+" I'll get the correct behaviour.
>
>>>> s1 = "c11test/"
>>>> s2 = "c11test/Derivetest.c++"
>>>> regex.match(s1,s2)
>8
>
>Why? Can anybody explain me that?

Because "+" is a metacharacter in regexps, meaning "1 or more
occurrences of the previous regexp", and as such would need to be
escaped in the pattern.

However I suspect that in your case you might be better off using
string.find() rather than regexp.match(), since from the example you
give you don't seem to actually need regular expressions.