Python offers two different primitive operations based on regular expressions: match checks for a match only at the beginning of the string, while search checks for a match anywhere in the string (this is what Perl does by default).
Example
#!/usr/bin/python import re line = "Cats are smarter than dogs"; matchObj = re.match( r'dogs', line, re.M|re.I) if matchObj: print "match --> matchObj.group() : ", matchObj.group() else: print "No match!!" searchObj = re.search( r'dogs', line, re.M|re.I) if searchObj: print "search --> searchObj.group() : ", searchObj.group() else: print "Nothing found!!"
Output
When the above code is executed, it produces the following result −
No match!! search --> searchObj.group() : dogs