re.match versus re.findall

[Peter Hansen]

JerryB wrote:
> I have a string like this:
> 
> invalidStr = "192.168.*.1"
> 
> I want to be sure I don't get a * followed by a number, i.e. I want
> invalidStr to be invalid. So I do:
> 
> numberAfterStar = re.compile(r'\*.*\d')
> 
> Now, here's the fun:
> 
> If I run:
> if numberAfterStar.findall(invalidStr):
>     print "Found it with findall!"
> 
> it prints, if I run:
> 
> if numberAfterStar.match(invalidStr):
>     print "Found it with match!"
> 
> it doesn't.
> Why does findall finds a match it but match doesn't?

This might help:

 >>> numberAfterStar.findall(invalidStr)
['*.1']
 >>> numberAfterStar.match(invalidStr)
 >>> numberAfterStar.search(invalidStr)
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x00AF3DB0>

Check the docs on match, specifically where it talks about when you 
should use search() instead... (http://docs.python.org/lib/re-objects.html)

(By the way, thank you for the excellently crafted post.  I wish 
everyone who asked questions here took the time to prepare as thoroughly 
and include the actual failing code, etc...)

-Peter