[Python-3000] More wishful thinking

[Talin]

 <skip <at> pobox.com> writes:

>     Giovanni> I'm sure you were talking more generically, but as for this
>     Giovanni> specific case (which is indeed very common), I always wondered
>     Giovanni> why re couldn't export wrappers around bound methods of the
>     Giovanni> last match object, so to allow:
> 
>     Giovanni> if re.match(...):
>     Giovanni>    x,y = re.group(1), re.group(2)
>     Giovanni> elif re.match(..):
>     Giovanni>    ...
> 
> Because then the re module wouldn't be thread safe.
> 
> Skip

True, although I suppose that you could add a "last match" to
regular expression objects:

re_pattern = re.compile( ... )

if re_pattern.match( string ):
   text = re_pattern.lastmatch.group( 1 )

This violates the stateless nature of regular expression objects, which
is a minor wart. But other than that, the code seems cleaner to me -
in other words, we concern ourselves only test part of the match first,
and only after we've determined that there is a match, we start to look at
the specific attributes of the match.

-- Talin