[Tutor] Does it helps to learn "Regular Expressions" or ...

[Danny Yoo]

> Is it useful to know re module and its functions..??

HI Asrarahmed,

Yes.  Most people find them to be invaluable in their day-to-day work. 
The problem is that they're powerful enough that they look like an 
all-in-one tool: it's tempting to use them, even when they are the wrong 
tool for the job. *grin* So at least know about regular expressions, 
enough to know when and when not to use them.

You might want to look at the Regex HOWTO:

      http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/

to get more familiar with regular expressions.



> Or the string module has enough utilities to accomplish string 
> manipulation..!!!

For simple things, I'd stick with the methods in strings.  For other 
complicated tasks, regular expressions may be the right tool.  But for 
anything that deals with structure (i.e. HTML, XML, JSON), using a real 
parser for that language is more appropriate.  (Those parsers will usually 
be built on top of regular expressions, to hide some ugliness from you.)

Concretely, if anyone asks you to if they can use regular expressions to 
parse XML, try to convince them to look into the ElementTree library 
first.


Good luck!