[issue24454] Improve the usability of the match object named group API

[Raymond Hettinger]

New submission from Raymond Hettinger:

The usability, learnability, and readability of match object code would be improved by giving it a more Pythonic API (inspired by ElementTree).

Given a search like:

   data = 'Answer found on row 8 column 12.'
   mo = re.search(r'row (?P<row>\d+) column (?P<col>\d+)', data)

We currently access results with:

  print(mo.group('col'))
  print(len(mo.groups())

A better way would look like this:

  print(mo['col'])
  print(len(mo))

This would work nicely with string formatting:

  print('Located coordinate at (%(row)s, %(col)s)' % mo)
  print('Located coordinate at ({row}, {col})'.format_map(mo))

----------
components: Library (Lib)
messages: 245361
nosy: rhettinger
priority: low
severity: normal
status: open
title: Improve the usability of the match object named group API
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.6

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue24454>
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