Wild Card String Comparison

[Cameron Laird]

In article <Jgptk.19609$mh5.9473 at nlpi067.nbdc.sbc.com>,
W. eWatson <notvalid2 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>Is it possible to do a search for a wild card string in another string. For 
>example, I'd like to find "v*.dat" in a string called bingo. v must be 
>matched against only the first character in bingo, and not simply found 
>somewhere in bingo, as might be the case for "*v*.dat".
			.
			.
			.
Does this session leave any questions:

  python
  Python 2.4.4c0 (#2, Oct  2 2006, 00:57:46)
  [GCC 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-15)] on linux2
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  >>> import re
  >>> pattern = "^v.*\.dat"
  >>> compiled = re.compile(pattern)
  >>> compiled.match("victory.dat")
  <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7da2c60>
  >>> ms = compiled.match("victory.dat")
  >>> ms.group()
  "victory.dat"
  >>> compiled.match("avoid.dat")
  >>> # Notice the return value of "None".
  ...
  >>> import sys
  >>> sys.exit()

?