a string problem

[micklee74 at hotmail.com]

John Salerno wrote:

> micklee74 at hotmail.com wrote:
> > hi
> >
> > if i have a some lines  like this
> > a ) "here is first string"
> > b ) "here is string2"
> > c ) "here is string3"
> >
> > When i specify i only want to print the lines that contains "string" ie
> > the first line and not the others. If i use re module, how to compile
> > the expression to do this? I tried the re module and using simple
> > search() and everytime it gives me all the 3 lines that have "string"
> > in it, whereas i only need line 1.
> > If re module is not needed, how can i use string manipulation to do
> > this? thanks
> >
>
> As far as re goes, you can search for the pattern '\bstring\b', which
> will find just the word 'string' itself. Not sure if there's a better
> way to do it with REs.
>
> And I'm actually ashamed to admit that I know the RE way, but not the
> regular string manipulation way, if there is one! This seems like
> something easy enough to do without REs though.

if RE has the \b and it works, can we look into the source of re and
see how its done for \b ?