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Thu Sep 4 23:04:48 EDT 2003 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-September/037924.html

...or is this just me?

Let's take a look, Reference Lib, 4.2.1 Regular Expression Syntax says:

   "|"
           A|B, where A and B can be arbitrary REs, creates a regular
           expression that will match either A or B.
           [...]
           REs separated by "|" are tried from left to right, and the 
           first one that allows the complete pattern to match is considered 
           the accepted branch. This means that if A matches, B will never 
           be tested, even if it would produce a longer overall match. [...]

And now a little test:

import re
a = "Fuentes Rushdie Marquez"
print re.search("Rushdie|Fuentes", a).group() # returns "Fuentes"

According to the documentation I suspected it will return "Rushdie" 
rather than "Fuentes", but it looks like it returns first part of the
string that matches rather than first part of regular expression.

-- 
[ Wojtek Walczak - gminick (at) underground.org.pl ]
[        <http://gminick.linuxsecurity.pl/>        ]
[ "...rozmaite zwroty, matowe od patyny dawnosci." ]

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[Python-Dev] Discordance in documentation...