regular expressions and matches

[Johhny]

Hello,

I have recently written a small function that will verify that an IP
address is valid.

==SNIP==

import re
ipAddress = raw_input('IP Address : ')

def validateIP(ipAddress):
        ipRegex =
r"^([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])$"
        re_ip = re.compile(ipRegex)
        match = re_ip.match(ipAddress)
        if not match:
                print "an error has occured with ipAddress"
                return match
        else:
                return match

print(validateIP(ipAddress))

==SNIP==

I was having issues trying to get my code working so that I could pass
the IP addresses and it would return a true or false. When it matches I
get something that looks like this.

python ip_valid.py
IP Address : 192.158.1.1
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7de8c80>

As I am still attempting to learn python I am interested to know how I
could get the above to return a true or false if it matches or does not
match the IP address. I would also like to expand that so that if the
IP is wrong it requests the IP address again and recalls the function.
I have done the same thing in php very easily but python appears to be
getting the better of me. Any assistance and advice would be greatly
appreciated.

Regards,

Johhny