Question

In the python docs for regex there is the description of what the “.” does:

(Dot.) In the default mode, this matches any character except a
newline. If the DOTALL flag has been specified, this matches any
character including a newline.

For a project i do in Django i set up this regex:

url(r'^accounts/confirm/(.+)$', confirm,name='confirmation_view')

For all i understand, this should match any url that starts with ‘accounts/confirm/’, then followed by any number of arbitrary characters. These arbitrary characters are then passed to the function “confirm” as parameter. So far, so good.

So this regex should match

accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/

just as well as

accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e-048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/

and

accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e=048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/

and

accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e%20048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/

That, at least, was what i thought it would do. But it doesn’t, it matches only the first one. Django keeps returning me a 404 on the other ones. Which i do not understand, because the (.+) part of the expression should mean “match one ore more of any character except a newline”.

edit:
As the comments and answers proved, i got the regex right. So this is now a question about: why is Django not returning the correct view, but a 404. Is it doing some stuff to the url before passing it to that regex?

Answer 1

A quick test confirms this should work:

>>>import re
>>>test = ["accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/", "accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e-048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/", "accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e=048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/", "accounts/confirm/fb75c6529af9246e4e%20048d8a4298882909dc03ee0/"]
>>>all([re.match(r'^accounts/confirm/(.+)$', item) for item in test])
True

This will return false on any non matches:

>>>test.append("something else")
>>>all([re.match(r'^accounts/confirm/(.+)$', item) for item in test])
False

The problem must be elsewhere.