I've a perhaps unusual piece of data to parse with regexes. >>> import re >>> re.findall("a (\w ?)*", "a b c d e f g h") ['h'] This is a very very very simplified example. The result I was expecting is the following: ['a', 'b', 'c'] ... and so forth. Is it impossible to repeat a pattern group inside another? Tia, \\ jonas galvez // jonasgalvez.com