regex pattern to extract repeating groups

[Malcolm]

I am trying to understand why regex is not extracting all of the 
characters between two delimiters.

The complete string is the xmp IFD data extracted from a .CR2 image file.

I do have a work around, but it's messy and possibly not future proof.

Any insight greatly appreciated.

Malcolm

My test code is

import re

# environment # Python 3.6.5 (v3.6.5:f59c0932b4, Mar 28 2018, 17:00:18) 
[MSC v.1900 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32 # extract of real data for test 
purposes. This extract is repeated # the delimiters are <dc: and </dc: extract =''' <dc:creator> <rdf:Seq> <rdf:li>abcdef zxcvb</rdf:li> </rdf:Seq> 
</dc:creator> ''' # modify the test data modified_extract_1 =''' <dc:creator> <rdf:Seq> <rdf:li>abcdef zxcvb</rdf:li> </rdf:Seq> 
</dc:creator> ''' # modify test data version 2 this works modified_extract_2 =''' <dc:creator> <rdf:li>abcdef zxcvb</rdf:li> </dc:creator> ''' re_pattern =r'( *<dc:.*</dc:)' print('extract', re.search(re_pattern, extract, re.DOTALL))
# >>> s1 <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(1, 89), match=' <dc:creator>\n 
<rdf:Seq>\n <rdf:li>abcd> print('modified_extract_1', re.search(re_pattern, modified_extract_1, re.DOTALL))
# >>> sre.SRE_Match object; span=(1, 70), 
match='<dc:creator>\n<rdf:Seq>\n<rdf:li>abcdef zxcvb</rd> print('modified_extract_2', re.search(re_pattern, modified_extract_2, re.DOTALL))
# >>> s <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(1, 49), 
match='<dc:creator>\n<rdf:li>abcdef zxcvb</rdf:li>\n</dc> # NOTE the 
missing ':' from the </dc I