Peng Yu wrote:
I would like to match "a::" in "a::b", but not in "a:: b". That is, the character after "::" should be a alphanumeric character.
sounds like a look-ahead assertion is what you need: >>> import re >>> re.match("\w::(?=\w)", "a::b") <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x01442138> >>> _.group() 'a::' >>> re.match("\w::(?=\w)", "a:: b") >>> </F> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list