regular expression back references

[Matthew]

> >>> macExpression = r"[0-9A-F]{1,2}(\:|\.|\-)([0-9A-F]{1,2}\1){4,4}[0-9A-F]{1,2}$"


Thanks very much that will work a lot better. I am going to save the
other code you (and the others) offered for later. It may be useful
later on in the program.

Thanks
-matthew