Question

I chose this way to get linux distro name:

ls /etc/*release

And now I have to parse it for name:

/etc/<name>-release

def checkDistro():
    p = Popen('ls /etc/*release' , shell = True, stdout = PIPE)
    distroRelease = p.stdout.read()

    distroName = re.search( ur"\/etc\/(.*)\-release", distroRelease).group()
    print distroName

But this prints the same string that is in distroRelease.

Answer 1

You need .group(1), because you want the first capture group – without arguments, it defaults to .group(0) which is the entire matched text.