possible bug in re expression?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 10:47:54 +0100, Robin Becker wrote:

> Does this in fact that almost any broken regexp specification will
> silently fail because re will reset and consider any metacharacter as
> literal?

Well, I don't know about "almost any", but at least some broken regexes 
will explicitly fail:



py> import re
py> re.search('*', "123*4")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.3/re.py", line 161, in search
    return _compile(pattern, flags).search(string)
  [...]
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.3/sre_parse.py", line 552, in _parse
    raise error("nothing to repeat")
sre_constants.error: nothing to repeat

(For brevity I have abbreviated the traceback.)

-- 
Steven D'Aprano
http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/