Iterate over group names in a regex match?

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Brian D:
> Here's a simple named group matching pattern:
> 
>>>> s = "1,2,3"
>>>> p = re.compile(r"(?P<one>\d),(?P<two>\d),(?P<three>\d)")
>>>> m = re.match(p, s)
>>>> m
> <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x011BE610>
>>>> print m.groups()
> ('1', '2', '3')
> 
> Is it possible to call the group names, so that I can iterate over
> them?
> 
> The result I'm looking for would be:
> 
> ('one', 'two', 'three')

I never used that beast (I'm in a sense pretty new to Python, although starting 
some months back I only investigate what's needed for my writings), but checking 
things in the interpreter:


 >>> import re
 >>> re
<module 're' from 'C:\Program Files\cpython\python26\lib\re.pyc'>
 >>> s = "1,2,3"
 >>> p = re.compile(r"(?P<one>\d),(?P<two>\d),(?P<three>\d)")
 >>> m = re.match(p, s)
 >>> m
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x01319F70>
 >>> m.groups()
('1', '2', '3')
 >>> type( m.groups() )
<type 'tuple'>
 >>> dir( m )
['__copy__', '__deepcopy__', 'end', 'expand', 'group', 'groupdict', 'groups', 
'span', 'start']
 >>> m.groupdict
<built-in method groupdict of _sre.SRE_Match object at 0x01319F70>
 >>> m.groupdict()
{'one': '1', 'three': '3', 'two': '2'}
 >>> print( tuple( m.groupdict().keys() ) )
('one', 'three', 'two')
 >>> _


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf