[Tutor] String matching

[Bernard Lebel]

Allrighty, thanks a lot everyone.

Bernard


Danny Yoo wrote:
> 
>>>>>>mystring = 'helloworldmynameisbernardlebel'
>>>
>>>Now I wish to attempt a match with 'bernard'.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>if not re.compile( 'bernard' ).match( mystring ) == None:
>>>
>>>... 	print 'success'
>>>
>>>Well, nothing gets printed. Could anyone tell me how to achieve that
>>>simple type of matching?
>>
>>You need to use search(), not match(). match() tries to match the
>>pattern to the beginning of the string. IOW, in your case it tries to
>>see if mystring begins with "bernard".
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Bernard,
> 
> If it helps, imagine that match() always puts a beginning anchor '^' at
> the beginning of the pattern, and you'll see the difference between
> match() and search().
> 
> (I'm lying in a small way: that's not exactly how match() works, but it's
> close... *grin*)
> 
> There's also a brief discussion about it in the documentation:
> 
>     http://www.python.org/doc/lib/matching-searching.html
> 
> which tries to show more formally why we have both match() and search().
> 
> Good luck to you!