re.search (works)|(doesn't work) depending on for loop order

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:27:49 -0700, sgharvey wrote:

> ... and by works, I mean works like I expect it to.
> 
> I'm writing my own cheesy config.ini parser because ConfigParser
> doesn't preserve case or order of sections, or order of options w/in
> sections.
> 
> What's confusing me is this:
>    If I try matching every line to one pattern at a time, all the
> patterns that are supposed to match, actually match.
>    If I try to match every pattern to one line at a time, only one
> pattern will match.
> 
> What am I not understanding about re.search?

That has nothing to do with `re.search` but how files work.  A file has a
"current position marker" that is advanced at each iteration to the next
line in the file.  When it is at the end, it stays there, so you can just
iterate *once* over an open file unless you rewind it with the `seek()`
method.

That only works on "seekable" files and it's not a good idea anyway
because usually the files and the overhead of reading is greater than the
time to iterate over in memory data like the patterns.

Ciao,
	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch