Python Regex: re.search() VS re.findall()

A Regular expression (sometimes called a Rational expression) is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern, mainly for use in pattern matching with strings, or string matching, i.e. “find and replace”-like operations. Regular expressions are a generalized way to match patterns with sequences of characters.

Module Regular Expressions (RE) specifies a set of strings (pattern) that matches it. To understand the RE analogy, MetaCharacters are useful, important and will be used in functions of module re.

There are a total of 14 metacharacters and will be discussed as they follow into functions:

\   Used to drop the special meaning of character
    following it (discussed below)
[]  Represent a character class
^   Matches the beginning
$   Matches the end
.   Matches any character except newline
?   Matches zero or one occurrence.
|   Means OR (Matches with any of the characters
    separated by it.
*   Any number of occurrences (including 0 occurrences)
+   One ore more occurrences
{}  Indicate number of occurrences of a preceding RE 
    to match.
()  Enclose a group of REs

re.search()

re.search() method either returns None (if the pattern doesn’t match), or a re.MatchObject that contains information about the matching part of the string. This method stops after the first match, so this is best suited for testing a regular expression more than extracting data.

Example:

# A Python program to demonstrate working of re.match(). 
import re 
   
# Lets use a regular expression to match a date string 
# in the form of Month name followed by day number 
regex = r"([a-zA-Z]+) (\d+)"
   
match = re.search(regex, "I was born on June 24") 
   
if match != None: 
   
    # We reach here when the expression "([a-zA-Z]+) (\d+)" 
    # matches the date string. 
   
    # This will print [14, 21), since it matches at index 14 
    # and ends at 21.  
    print("Match at index % s, % s" % (match.start(), match.end()))
   
    # We us group() method to get all the matches and 
    # captured groups. The groups contain the matched values. 
    # In particular: 
    # match.group(0) always returns the fully matched string 
    # match.group(1) match.group(2), ... return the capture 
    # groups in order from left to right in the input string 
    # match.group() is equivalent to match.group(0) 
   
    # So this will print "June 24" 
    print("Full match: % s" % (match.group(0)))
   
    # So this will print "June" 
    print("Month: % s" % (match.group(1)))
   
    # So this will print "24" 
    print("Day: % s" % (match.group(2)))
   
else: 
    print("The regex pattern does not match.")

Output:

Match at index 14, 21
Full match: June 24
Month: June
Day: 24

re.findall()

Return all non-overlapping matches of pattern in string, as a list of strings. The string is scanned left-to-right, and matches are returned in the order found.

Example:

# A Python program to demonstrate working of 
# findall() 
import re 
   
# A sample text string where regular expression  
# is searched. 
string = """Hello my Number is 123456789 and 
             my friend's number is 987654321"""
   
# A sample regular expression to find digits. 
regex = '\d+'
   
match = re.findall(regex, string) 
print(match) 

Output:

['123456789', '987654321']

Last Updated on October 28, 2021 by admin

Python Regex: re.search() VS re.findall()