Return the content of a Wildcard match in Python

Question

Is it possible to return the contents that match a wildcard (like .*) in a regex pattern in Python?

For example, a match like:

re.search('stack.*flow','stackoverflow') 

would return the string 'over'.

Answer 1

Use a capturing group:

>>> import re
>>> re.search('stack(.*)flow', 'stackoverflow').group(1)
'over'

Answer 2

Yes, you can capture your result. For this, just use the ()

matchobj = re.search('stack(.*)flow','stackoverflow') 
print(matchobj.group(1)) # => over