python3 regular expression multiline

Asked Jan 23 '18 at 18:36

Active Jan 23 '18 at 18:44

Viewed 12 times

I have read the tutorial on this and a fair amount of post and I am having trouble python3 regex matching in multi line mode. Consider the simple test:

text = "abcdef\nghijkl"
exp1 = "^.*(def)"
exp2 = "^.*(jkl)"
print(text)
import re
re.compile(exp1, re.MULTILINE).match(text) is not None
re.compile(exp2, re.MULTILINE).match(text) is not None

This results in:

abcdef
ghijkl
True
False

This is the most basic example I could find, and all the other online regex matching ones of tried show that both should match with multi line but this doesn't. What am I missing? Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

asked Jan 23 '18 at 18:36

noone392

You should use `re.S`, not `re.M`, flag. – Wiktor Stribiżew Jan 23 '18 at 18:37
@WiktorStribiżew Why would I need both? if I have the re.S then that will just include the new line as a character for the '.'. correct? – noone392 Jan 23 '18 at 18:39
1

`.match` requires the match to be at the start of the string regasrdless of the `re.M` flag. The `^` with `re.match` makes no sense. Or use `re.search`. – Wiktor Stribiżew Jan 23 '18 at 18:39
@WiktorStribiżew Thankyou! yes the way regex standard defines it it is actually .search! – noone392 Jan 23 '18 at 18:42

python3 regular expression multiline

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