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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-07T18:53:48+00:00

>>> match = re.findall(r’\w\w’, ‘hello’) >>> print match [‘he’, ‘ll’] Since \w\w means two

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>>> match = re.findall(r'\w\w', 'hello')
>>> print match
['he', 'll']

Since \w\w means two characters, ‘he’ and ‘ll’ are expected. But why do ‘el’ and ‘lo’ not match the regex?

>>> match1 = re.findall(r'el', 'hello')
>>> print match1
['el']
>>>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    findall doesn’t yield overlapping matches by default. This expression does however:

    >>> re.findall(r'(?=(\w\w))', 'hello')
['he', 'el', 'll', 'lo']

    Here (?=...) is a lookahead assertion:

    (?=...) matches if ... matches next, but doesn’t consume any of the
    string. This is called a lookahead assertion. For example,
    Isaac (?=Asimov) will match 'Isaac ' only if it’s followed by 'Asimov'.

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