%d not working in re at Python 2.7?

[Tim Chase]

On 05/11/12 13:58, vacu wrote:
> I am frustrated to see %d not working in my Python 2.7 re.search, like
> this example:
> 
>>>> (re.search('%d', "asdfdsf78asdfdf")).group(0)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'group'
> 
> 
> \d works fine:
> 
>>>> (re.search('\d+', "asdfdsf78asdfdf")).group(0)
> '78'
> 
> Do you have any idea what's problem here?

Because the regexp module doesn't support using "%d" in this way?
I'd be curious is you can point to Python documentation to the contrary.

You know what the problem is, you didn't spell it r"\d+" so I'm not
sure why you're asking.  I've tested as far back as Python2.3 and
"%d" hasn't worked like you seem to expect it to in any of those
versions.

As an aside, use raw strings (as in r"\d+" with the leading "r")
instead of regular strings to ensure escaping applies as you expect
it to.

-tkc