Why is it different from the example on the tutorial?

[Tim Chase]

On 2014-07-06 05:13, rxjwg98 at gmail.com wrote:
> What I get on Python console:
> 
> $ python
> Python 2.7.5 (default, Oct  2 2013, 22:34:09)
> [GCC 4.8.1] on cygwin
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more
> information.
> >>> import re
> >>> p = re.compile('ab*')
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     p = re.compile('ab*')
>     ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> >>>

Are you sure that you copied/pasted that directly from the console
instead of transcribing it with some mistake?

I just did the same thing at the console and it worked perfectly
fine

$ python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Mar 13 2014, 11:03:55) 
[GCC 4.7.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import re
>>> p = re.compile('ab*')
>>>


-tkc