"re" vs "sre"?

[Peter Otten]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> I learned about Python regular expressions from the Web documentation
> <http://docs.python.org/lib/lib.html>. This describes a module named "re".
> Then I saw some code written by a colleague, and he was using a module
> named "sre". I checked my Python 2.4.3 installation, and sure enough, I
> have a module named "sre" as well as "re". Curious, I fired up an
> interactive Python session, and looked to see what the docstrings were for
> these modules. And for the "re" module, the help says:
> 
>     re - Minimal "re" compatibility wrapper.  See "sre" for documentation.
> 
> and "sre" seems to have the more complete set of docstrings.
> 
> So which one should we be using?

Here's what Python 2.5 has to say on the matter:
>>> import sre
__main__:1: DeprecationWarning: The sre module is deprecated, please import
re.

Peter