Regular expressopn problem

[Martin Bertolino]

I'm using Python 2.0 to try to parse out some GUIDs from an XML document
returned from an HTTP server, but I'm having some problems with some regular
expressions that I believe should match what I'm looking for.

Consider the following input to the parse_token function:

<response version="1.0" server="test" code="0000" result_msg="success">
    <signon_user request_id="123"
response_id="E95FA6E0-3944-4945-93CD-4E37EDB807E3"
            code="0000" result_msg="success">
                <token>4CA064D0-5653-45E4-9581-9EE9A9B12A49</token>
                <pin_attributes pin_set_needed="N" grace_logins_left="3"/>
                <pin_control pin_set_enabled="N" pin_reset_enabled="N"/>
                <last_signon date_time="2001-05-09T15:30:06Z"/>
                <identification ssn="222222222" employee_id="222222222"/>
                <name title="sir" first="jokey" middle="dorcs" last="smokey"
suffix="sr."/>
                <division_id>central</division_id>
    </signon_user>
</response>

and the parse_token function, whick attempts to get the value of the <token>
node,  implemented as follows

import re

def parse_token(output_xml):
    # v0: token_re =
re.search(r"<token>([0-9A-Ea-e]+\-[0-9A-Ea-e]+\-[0-9A-Ea-e]+\-[0-9A-Ea-e]+\-
[0-9A-Ea-e]+)</token>", output_xml)
    # v1: token_re = re.search(r"<token>([0-9A-Ea-e\-]+)</token>",
output_xml)
    token_re = re.search(r"<token>(.+)</token>", output_xml)
    if token_re:
        return token_re.group(1)
    else:
        raise "unable to parse token out of output xml"

The re.search that is not commented correctly matches the node so it returns
4CA064D0-5653-45E4-9581-9EE9A9B12A49. The other two (v0 and v1) do not. I
tried those two RE on a perl script, and I do get the expected output.

Am I missing something? It seems as if the compile is getting thrown by the
'-'s in the RE.

Thanks for the help.

Martin Bertolino