[Tutor] Regular expression oddity

[bob gailer]

Emmanuel Ruellan wrote:
> Hi tutors!
>
> While trying to write a regular expression that would split a string
> the way I want, I noticed a behaviour I didn't expect.
>
>   
>>>> re.findall('.?', 'some text')
>>>>         
> ['s', 'o', 'm', 'e', ' ', 't', 'e', 'x', 't', '']
>
> Where does the last string, the empty one, come from?
> I find this behaviour rather annoying: I'm getting one group too many.
>   
The ? means 0 or 1 occurrence. I think re is matching the null string at 
the end.

Drop the ? and you'll get what you want.

Of course you can get the same thing using list('some text') at lower cost.

-- 
Bob Gailer
Chapel Hill NC 
919-636-4239