A tutorial I have on Regex in python explains how to use the re module in python, I wanted to grab the URL out of an A tag so knowing Regex I wrote the correct expression and tested it in my regex testing app of choice and ensured it worked. When placed into python it failed:
result = re.match("a_regex_of_pure_awesomeness", "a string containing the awesomeness") # result is None` After much head scratching I found out the issue, it automatically expects your pattern to be at the start of the string. I have found a fix but I would like to know how to change:
regex = ".*(a_regex_of_pure_awesomeness)" into
regex = "a_regex_of_pure_awesomeness" Okay, it’s a standard URL regex but I wanted to avoid any potential confusion about what I wanted to get rid of and possibly pretend to be funny.
In Python, there’s a distinction between ‘match’ and ‘search’; match only looks for the pattern at the start of the string, and search looks for the pattern starting at any location within the string.
Python regex docs
Matching vs searching