Python regular expression re.match, why this code does not work?

Question

This is written in Python,

import re
s='1 89059809102/30589533 IronMan 30 Santa Ana Massage table / IronMan 30 Santa Ana Massage table'
pattern='\s(\d{11})/(\d{8})'
re.match(pattern,s)

it returns none.

I tried taking the brackets off,

pattern='\s\d{11}/\d{8}' 

It still returns none .

My questions are:

1. Why the re.match does not find anything?
2. What is the difference with or without bracket in pattern?

Answer 1

re.match "matches" since the beginning of the string, but there is an extra 1 .

Use re.search instead, which will "search" anywhere within the string. And, in your case, also find something:

>>> re.search(pattern,s).groups()
('89059809102', '30589533')

If you remove the brackets in pattern, it will still return a valid _sre.SRE_Match , object, but with empty groups :

>>> re.search('\s\d{11}/\d{8}',s).groups()
()