[Tutor] Regular Expression Misunderstanding

[Kent Johnson]

Steve Nelson wrote:
> On 7/14/06, John Fouhy <john at fouhy.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> It doesn't have to match the _whole_ string.
>>     
>
> Ah right - yes, so it doesn't say that it has to end with a b - as per
> your comment about ending with $.
>   
The matched portion must end with b, but it doesn't have to coincide 
with the end of the string. The whole regex must be used for it to 
match; the whole string does not have to be used - the matched portion 
can be a substring.
>   
>> If you look at the match object returned, you should se that the match
>> starts at position 0 and is four characters long.
>>     
>
> How does one query a match object in this way?  I am learning by
> fiddling interactively.
The docs for match objects are here:
http://docs.python.org/lib/match-objects.html

match.start() and match.end() will tell you where it matched.

You might like to try the regex demo that comes with Python; on Windows 
it is installed at C:\Python24\Tools\Scripts\redemo.py. It gives you an 
easy way to experiment with regexes.

Kent