Python's regular expression?

[Duncan Booth]

Mirco Wahab wrote:

> Lets see - a really simple find/match
> would look like this in Python:
> 
>    import re
> 
>    t = 'blue socks and red shoes'
>    p = re.compile('(blue|white|red)')
>    if p.match(t):
>       print t
> 
> which prints the text 't' because  of
> the positive pattern match.
> 
> In Perl, you write:
> 
>    use Acme::Pythonic;
> 
>    $t = 'blue socks and red shoes'
>    if ($t =~ /(blue|white|red)/):
>      print $t
> 
> which is one line shorter (no need
> to compile the regular expression
> in advance).
> 

There is no need to compile the regular expression in advance in Python 
either:

   t = 'blue socks and red shoes'
   if re.match('(blue|white|red)', t):
      print t

The only advantage to compiling in advance is a small speed up, and most of 
the time that won't be significant.