a n00b regex qestion

[Tim Chase]

> I tried these this:
> 
> string = string.replace('<tr>\s*<th class="table">Field One</th>\s*<td>
> %FieldOneValue%</td>\s*</tr>', '')
> 
> 
> But this doesn't work.  The doco for Python's regex suggests that \s
> should match any whitespace including newlines which is what I
> wanted,  

from http://docs.python.org/lib/module-re.html

"""
Regular expressions use the backslash character ("\") to indicate 
special forms or to allow special characters to be used without 
invoking their special meaning. This collides with Python's usage 
of the same character for the same purpose in string literals; 
for example, to match a literal backslash, one might have to 
write '\\\\' as the pattern string, because the regular 
expression must be "\\", and each backslash must be expressed as 
"\\" inside a regular Python string literal.

The solution is to use Python's raw string notation for regular 
expression patterns; backslashes are not handled in any special 
way in a string literal prefixed with "r". So r"\n" is a 
two-character string containing "\" and "n", while "\n" is a 
one-character string containing a newline. Usually patterns will 
be expressed in Python code using this raw string notation.
"""

and from http://docs.python.org/lib/re-syntax.html

"""
If you're not using a raw string to express the pattern, remember 
that Python also uses the backslash as an escape sequence in 
string literals; if the escape sequence isn't recognized by 
Python's parser, the backslash and subsequent character are 
included in the resulting string. However, if Python would 
recognize the resulting sequence, the backslash should be 
repeated twice. This is complicated and hard to understand, so 
it's highly recommended that you use raw strings for all but the 
simplest expressions.
"""

And if you don't know about raw strings, you can read about them 
here:

http://docs.python.org/ref/strings.html

-tkc