one more question on regex

[mg]

Il Fri, 22 Jan 2016 15:32:57 +0000, mg ha scritto:

> python 3.4.3
> 
> import re re.search('(ab){2}','abzzabab')
> <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(4, 8), match='abab'>
> 
>>>> re.findall('(ab){2}','abzzabab')
> ['ab']
> 
> Why for search() the match is 'abab' and for findall the match is 'ab'?

finditer seems to be consistent with search:
regex = re.compile('(ab){2}')

for match in regex.finditer('abzzababab'): 
  print ("%s: %s" % (match.start(), match.span() ))
... 
4: (4, 8)