Why re.match()?

[Rhodri James]

On Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:40:49 +0100, kj <no.email at please.post> wrote:

> In <4a4e2227$0$7801$426a74cc at news.free.fr> Bruno Desthuilliers  
> <bruno.42.desthuilliers at websiteburo.invalid> writes:
>
>> kj a écrit :
>> (snipo
>>> To have a special-case
>>> re.match() method in addition to a general re.search() method is
>>> antithetical to language minimalism,
>
>> FWIW, Python has no pretention to minimalism.
>
> Assuming that you mean by this that Python's authors have no such
> pretensions:
>
> "There is real value in having a small language."
>
> 			Guido van Rossum, 2007.07.03
> 			http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2007-July/008663.html

re.match() is part of the library, not the language.  The standard
library is in no sense of the word small.  It has a mild tendency
to avoid repeating itself, but presumably the stonkingly obvious
optimisation possibilities of re.match() over re.search() are
considered worth the (small) increase in size.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses