How to escape strings for re.finditer?

[MRAB]

On 2023-02-27 23:11, Jen Kris via Python-list wrote:
> When matching a string against a longer string, where both strings have spaces in them, we need to escape the spaces.
> 
> This works (no spaces):
> 
> import re
> example = 'abcdefabcdefabcdefg'
> find_string = "abc"
> for match in re.finditer(find_string, example):
>      print(match.start(), match.end())
> 
> That gives me the start and end character positions, which is what I want.
> 
> However, this does not work:
> 
> import re
> example = re.escape('X - cty_degrees + 1 + qq')
> find_string = re.escape('cty_degrees + 1')
> for match in re.finditer(find_string, example):
>      print(match.start(), match.end())
> 
> I’ve tried several other attempts based on my reseearch, but still no match.
> 
> I don’t have much experience with regex, so I hoped a reg-expert might help.
> 
You need to escape only the pattern, not the string you're searching.