re: 4.2.1 Regular Expression Syntax http://docs.python.org/lib/re-syntax.html
*?, +?, ?? Adding "?" after the qualifier makes it perform the match in non-greedy or minimal fashion; as few characters as possible will be matched. the regular expression module fails to perform non-greedy matches as described in the documentation: more than "as few characters as possible" are matched. this is a bug and it needs to be fixed. examples follow. [EMAIL PROTECTED] /ntd/vl $ cat vwre.py #! /usr/bin/env python import re vwre = re.compile("V.*?W") vwlre = re.compile("V.*?WL") if __name__ == "__main__": newdoc = "V1WVVV2WWW" vwli = re.findall(vwre, newdoc) print "vwli[], expect", ['V1W', 'V2W'] print "vwli[], return", vwli newdoc = "V1WLV2WV3WV4WLV5WV6WL" vwlli = re.findall(vwlre, newdoc) print "vwlli[], expect", ['V1WL', 'V4WL', 'V6WL'] print "vwlli[], return", vwlli [EMAIL PROTECTED] /ntd/vl $ python vwre.py vwli[], expect ['V1W', 'V2W'] vwli[], return ['V1W', 'VVV2W'] vwlli[], expect ['V1WL', 'V4WL', 'V6WL'] vwlli[], return ['V1WL', 'V2WV3WV4WL', 'V5WV6WL'] [EMAIL PROTECTED] /ntd/vl $ python -V Python 2.3.3 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list