All, perl has a regex assertion (\G) that allows multiple-match regular expressions to be able to use the position of the last match. Perl's documentation puts it this way:
\G Match only at pos() (e.g. at the end-of-match position of prior m//g) Anyways, this is exceedingly powerful for matching regularly structured free-form records, and I was really surprised when I found out that python did not have it. For example, if findall supported this, it would be possible to write things like this (a quick and dirty ifconfig parser): pat = re.compile(r'\G(\S+)(.*?\n)(?=\S+|\Z)', re.S) val = """ eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr xx inet addr: xx.xx.xx.xx Bcast:xx.xx.xx.xx Mask:xx.xx.xx.xx ... lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 """ matches = re.findall(pat, val) So - why doesn't python have this? is it something that simply was overlooked, or is there another method of doing the same thing with arbitrarily complex freeform records? thanks much.. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com