[Python-ideas] Python 2's re module should take longs

[Terry Reedy]

On 9/30/2014 1:16 PM, Ryan Gonzalez wrote:
> This works:
>
> re.search('(abc)', 'abc').group(1)
>
> but this doesn't:
>
> re.search('(abc)', 'abc').group(1L)
>
> The latter raises "IndexError: no such group". Shouldn't that
> technically work?

If groups were stored in a list, then technically, yes, not if groups 
are stored in a dict to support named groups with just one structure.

Since the number of groups is limited to 99 or 100 in 2.7 (just changed 
for 3.5), there is no technical reason to use longs.

Even if the exception were considered a bug, I would not change it since 
using longs would restrict code to 2.7.9+ and make it less portable to 3.x.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy