Question

I am learning re in python.
I understand all other things in the following example.
but, i really dont understand what special (in tags) means in the following example.

re.compile('((?P<special>[0:-])\s)')

kindly help if know it.

Answer 1

They’re called named capturing groups.

A quick explanation here:

Python’s regex module was the first to offer a solution: named
capture. By assigning a name to a capturing group, you can easily
reference it by name. (?P<name>group) captures the match of group into
the backreference “name”. You can reference the contents of the group
with the numbered backreference \1 or the named backreference
(?P=name).