On Feb 7, 11:23 am, "Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality" <ihates...@hotmail.com> wrote: > I'm confused by this behaviour: > > import re > > regex = re.compile('foo') > match = regex.match('whatfooever') > > In my experience with regular expressions, regex should have found a > match. However, in this case regex.match() returns None. Why is that?
Because that is exactly what it is documented to do. > What am I missing? Inter alia: (1) The whole section of the fantastic manual devoted to this topic: http://www.python.org/doc/2.6/library/re.html#matching-vs-searching (2) a section in the fabulous HOWTO: http://www.python.org/doc/2.6/howto/regex.html#performing-matches (3) the re section in the phantasmagorical help sub-system (very handy if your internet connection goes on the fritz): Python 2.6.1 (r261:67517, Dec 4 2008, 16:51:00) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import re >>> help(re) Help on module re: [snip] This module exports the following functions: match Match a regular expression pattern to the beginning of a string. search Search a string for the presence of a pattern. [snip] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list