On 2013-02-15 00:32, python wrote: > the regex--- pat = r'([a-z].+?\s)(.+?)((\(.+\)))?$' ,do not work at all. > [snip] Sorry, that should be: pat1 = r'([a-z].+?\s)(.+?)((\(.+\)))?$' Group 2 should've been lazy "(.+?)", and because of that it should've forced matching the end of the line with "$".