[Tutor] regular expression woes ..

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> Does anybody know why when I try...
> 
> >>> pat = re.compile('_.*' | '\..*')
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in ?
>     pat = re.compile('_.*' | '\..*')
> TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for |

Coz the re function takes a single RE as a string.

You are trying to take the bitwise OR of two strings 
and pass the result. Bitwise ORs don't work with 
strings... You need to form the whole RE as a single string.

"_.*|\..*"

OR maybe

"(_.*)|(\..*)"

depending onm exactly what you want.

BTW. Somebody has put on the web a really nice RE syntax 
checker written in Python and Tkinter. You might want to 
do a search and see if you can pick it up...

> >>> pat = re.compile(('_.*') | ('\..*'))

I suspect this is the correct one if you just wrap it all 
as a string...

Alan G