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-rw-r--r--Doc/library/re.rst18
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/re.rst b/Doc/library/re.rst
index 0034b46..e6e2423 100644
--- a/Doc/library/re.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/re.rst
@@ -1565,16 +1565,22 @@ search() vs. match()
.. sectionauthor:: Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@acm.org>
-Python offers two different primitive operations based on regular expressions:
-:func:`re.match` checks for a match only at the beginning of the string, while
-:func:`re.search` checks for a match anywhere in the string (this is what Perl
-does by default).
+Python offers different primitive operations based on regular expressions:
+
++ :func:`re.match` checks for a match only at the beginning of the string
++ :func:`re.search` checks for a match anywhere in the string
+ (this is what Perl does by default)
++ :func:`re.fullmatch` checks for entire string to be a match
+
For example::
>>> re.match("c", "abcdef") # No match
>>> re.search("c", "abcdef") # Match
<re.Match object; span=(2, 3), match='c'>
+ >>> re.fullmatch("p.*n", "python") # Match
+ <re.Match object; span=(0, 6), match='python'>
+ >>> re.fullmatch("r.*n", "python") # No match
Regular expressions beginning with ``'^'`` can be used with :func:`search` to
restrict the match at the beginning of the string::
@@ -1588,8 +1594,8 @@ Note however that in :const:`MULTILINE` mode :func:`match` only matches at the
beginning of the string, whereas using :func:`search` with a regular expression
beginning with ``'^'`` will match at the beginning of each line. ::
- >>> re.match('X', 'A\nB\nX', re.MULTILINE) # No match
- >>> re.search('^X', 'A\nB\nX', re.MULTILINE) # Match
+ >>> re.match("X", "A\nB\nX", re.MULTILINE) # No match
+ >>> re.search("^X", "A\nB\nX", re.MULTILINE) # Match
<re.Match object; span=(4, 5), match='X'>