'.'

(Dot.) In the default mode, this matches any character except a newline. If the DOTALL  flag has been specified, this matches any character including a newline.

'^'

(Caret.) Matches the start of the string, and in MULTILINE  mode also matches immediately after each newline.

'$'

Matches the end of the string or just before the newline at the end of the string, and in MULTILINE  mode also matches before a newline. foo matches both ‘foo’ and ‘foobar’, while the regular expression foo$ matches only ‘foo’. More interestingly, searching for foo.$ in 'foo1\nfoo2\n' matches ‘foo2’ normally, but ‘foo1’ in MULTILINE  mode; searching for a single $ in 'foo\n'will find two (empty) matches: one just before the newline, and one at the end of the string.

'*'

Causes the resulting RE to match 0 or more repetitions of the preceding RE, as many repetitions as are possible. ab* will match ‘a’, ‘ab’, or ‘a’ followed by any number of ‘b’s.

'+'

Causes the resulting RE to match 1 or more repetitions of the preceding RE.ab+ will match ‘a’ followed by any non-zero number of ‘b’s; it will not match just ‘a’.

'?'

Causes the resulting RE to match 0 or 1 repetitions of the preceding RE. ab?will match either ‘a’ or ‘ab’.

*?, +?, ??

The '*', '+', and '?' qualifiers are all greedy; they match as much text as possible. Sometimes this behaviour isn’t desired; if the RE <.*> is matched against <a> b <c>, it will match the entire string, and not just <a>. Adding ?after the qualifier makes it perform the match in non-greedy or minimalfashion; as few characters as possible will be matched. Using the RE <.*?>will match only <a>.

{m}

Specifies that exactly m copies of the previous RE should be matched; fewer matches cause the entire RE not to match. For example, a{6} will match exactly six 'a' characters, but not five.

{m,n}

Causes the resulting RE to match from m to n repetitions of the preceding RE, attempting to match as many repetitions as possible. For example, a{3,5} will match from 3 to 5 'a' characters. Omitting m specifies a lower bound of zero, and omitting n specifies an infinite upper bound. As an example, a{4,}b will match aaaab or a thousand 'a' characters followed by a b, but not aaab. The comma may not be omitted or the modifier would be confused with the previously described form.

{m,n}?

Causes the resulting RE to match from m to n repetitions of the preceding RE, attempting to match as few repetitions as possible. This is the non-greedy version of the previous qualifier. For example, on the 6-character string 'aaaaaa', a{3,5} will match 5 'a' characters, while a{3,5}? will only match 3 characters.

'\'

Either escapes special characters (permitting you to match characters like'*', '?', and so forth), or signals a special sequence; special sequences are discussed below.

If you’re not using a raw string to express the pattern, remember that Python also uses the backslash as an escape sequence in string literals; if the escape sequence isn’t recognized by Python’s parser, the backslash and subsequent character are included in the resulting string. However, if Python would recognize the resulting sequence, the backslash should be repeated twice. This is complicated and hard to understand, so it’s highly recommended that you use raw strings for all but the simplest expressions.

[]

Used to indicate a set of characters. In a set:

• Characters can be listed individually, e.g. [amk] will match 'a', 'm', or 'k'.
• Ranges of characters can be indicated by giving two characters and separating them by a '-', for example [a-z] will match any lowercase ASCII letter, [0-5][0-9] will match all the two-digits numbers from 00 to 59, and [0-9A-Fa-f] will match any hexadecimal digit. If - is escaped (e.g. [a\-z]) or if it’s placed as the first or last character (e.g. [a-]), it will match a literal '-'.
• Special characters lose their special meaning inside sets. For example,[(+*)] will match any of the literal characters '(', '+', '*', or ')'.
• Character classes such as \w or \S (defined below) are also accepted inside a set, although the characters they match depends on whetherASCII  or LOCALE  mode is in force.
• Characters that are not within a range can be matched by complementing the set. If the first character of the set is '^', all the characters that are not in the set will be matched. For example, [^5] will match any character except '5', and [^^] will match any character except '^'. ^ has no special meaning if it’s not the first character in the set.
• To match a literal ']' inside a set, precede it with a backslash, or place it at the beginning of the set. For example, both [()[\]{}] and []()[{}] will both match a parenthesis.

'|'

A|B, where A and B can be arbitrary REs, creates a regular expression that will match either A or B. An arbitrary number of REs can be separated by the'|' in this way. This can be used inside groups (see below) as well. As the target string is scanned, REs separated by '|' are tried from left to right. When one pattern completely matches, that branch is accepted. This means that once A matches, B will not be tested further, even if it would produce a longer overall match. In other words, the '|' operator is never greedy. To match a literal '|', use \|, or enclose it inside a character class, as in [|].

(...)

Matches whatever regular expression is inside the parentheses, and indicates the start and end of a group; the contents of a group can be retrieved after a match has been performed, and can be matched later in the string with the \number special sequence, described below. To match the literals '(' or ')', use \( or \), or enclose them inside a character class: [(] [)].

(?...)

This is an extension notation (a '?' following a '(' is not meaningful otherwise). The first character after the '?' determines what the meaning and further syntax of the construct is. Extensions usually do not create a new group; (?P<name>...) is the only exception to this rule. Following are the currently supported extensions.

(?aiLmsux)

(One or more letters from the set 'a', 'i', 'L', 'm', 's', 'u', 'x'.) The group matches the empty string; the letters set the corresponding flags: re.A (ASCII-only matching), re.I  (ignore case), re.L  (locale dependent), re.M (multi-line), re.S  (dot matches all), and re.X  (verbose), for the entire regular expression. (The flags are described in Module Contents .) This is useful if you wish to include the flags as part of the regular expression, instead of passing a flag argument to the re.compile()  function. Flags should be used first in the expression string.

(?:...)

A non-capturing version of regular parentheses. Matches whatever regular expression is inside the parentheses, but the substring matched by the groupcannot be retrieved after performing a match or referenced later in the pattern.

(?imsx-imsx:...)

(Zero or more letters from the set 'i', 'm', 's', 'x', optionally followed by '-' followed by one or more letters from the same set.) The letters set or removes the corresponding flags: re.I  (ignore case), re.M  (multi-line), re.S (dot matches all), and re.X  (verbose), for the part of the expression. (The flags are described in Module Contents .)

New in version 3.6.

(?P<name>...)

Similar to regular parentheses, but the substring matched by the group is accessible via the symbolic group name name. Group names must be valid Python identifiers, and each group name must be defined only once within a regular expression. A symbolic group is also a numbered group, just as if the group were not named.

Named groups can be referenced in three contexts. If the pattern is (?P<quote>['"]).*?(?P=quote) (i.e. matching a string quoted with either single or double quotes):

Context of reference to group “quote”	Ways to reference it
in the same pattern itself	(?P=quote) (as shown) \1
when processing match object m	m.group('quote') m.end('quote') (etc.)
in a string passed to the replargument of re.sub()	\g<quote> \g<1> \1

(?P=name)

A backreference to a named group; it matches whatever text was matched by the earlier group named name.

(?#...)

A comment; the contents of the parentheses are simply ignored.

(?=...)

Matches if ... matches next, but doesn’t consume any of the string. This is called a lookahead assertion. For example, Isaac (?=Asimov) will match'Isaac ' only if it’s followed by 'Asimov'.

(?!...)

Matches if ... doesn’t match next. This is a negative lookahead assertion. For example, Isaac (?!Asimov) will match 'Isaac ' only if it’s not followed by 'Asimov'.

(?<=...)

Matches if the current position in the string is preceded by a match for ... that ends at the current position. This is called a positive lookbehind assertion. (?<=abc)def will find a match in abcdef, since the lookbehind will back up 3 characters and check if the contained pattern matches. The contained pattern must only match strings of some fixed length, meaning that abc or a|b are allowed, but a* and a{3,4} are not. Note that patterns which start with positive lookbehind assertions will not match at the beginning of the string being searched; you will most likely want to use the search()  function rather than the match()  function:

>>>

>>> import re

>>> m = re.search('(?<=abc)def', 'abcdef')

>>> m.group(0)

'def'

This example looks for a word following a hyphen:

>>>

>>> m = re.search('(?<=-)\w+', 'spam-egg')

>>> m.group(0)

'egg'

Changed in version 3.5: Added support for group references of fixed length.

(?<!...)

Matches if the current position in the string is not preceded by a match for .... This is called a negative lookbehind assertion. Similar to positive lookbehind assertions, the contained pattern must only match strings of some fixed length. Patterns which start with negative lookbehind assertions may match at the beginning of the string being searched.

(?(id/name)yes-pattern|no-pattern)

Will try to match with yes-pattern if the group with given id or name exists, and with no-pattern if it doesn’t. no-pattern is optional and can be omitted. For example, (<)?(\w+@\w+(?:\.\w+)+)(?(1)>|$) is a poor email matching pattern, which will match with '<user@host.com>' as well as 'user@host.com', but not with '<user@host.com' nor 'user@host.com>'.

The special sequences consist of '\' and a character from the list below. If the ordinary character is not an ASCII digit or an ASCII letter, then the resulting RE will match the second character. For example, \$ matches the character '$'.

\number

Matches the contents of the group of the same number. Groups are numbered starting from 1. For example, (.+) \1 matches 'the the' or '55 55', but not 'thethe' (note the space after the group). This special sequence can only be used to match one of the first 99 groups. If the first digit of number is 0, or number is 3 octal digits long, it will not be interpreted as a group match, but as the character with octal value number. Inside the '[' and ']' of a character class, all numeric escapes are treated as characters.

\A

Matches only at the start of the string.

\b

Matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a word. A word is defined as a sequence of Unicode alphanumeric or underscore characters, so the end of a word is indicated by whitespace or a non-alphanumeric, non-underscore Unicode character. Note that formally, \b is defined as the boundary between a \w and a \W character (or vice versa), or between \w and the beginning/end of the string. This means that r'\bfoo\b' matches 'foo', 'foo.', '(foo)', 'bar foo baz' but not 'foobar' or 'foo3'.

By default Unicode alphanumerics are the ones used, but this can be changed by using the ASCII  flag. Inside a character range, \b represents the backspace character, for compatibility with Python’s string literals.

\B

Matches the empty string, but only when it is not at the beginning or end of a word. This means that r'py\B' matches 'python', 'py3', 'py2', but not 'py', 'py.', or 'py!'. \B is just the opposite of \b, so word characters are Unicode alphanumerics or the underscore, although this can be changed by using the ASCII  flag.

\d

For Unicode (str) patterns:

Matches any Unicode decimal digit (that is, any character in Unicode character category [Nd]). This includes [0-9], and also many other digit characters. If the ASCII  flag is used only [0-9] is matched (but the flag affects the entire regular expression, so in such cases using an explicit [0-9] may be a better choice).

For 8-bit (bytes) patterns:

Matches any decimal digit; this is equivalent to [0-9].

\D

Matches any character which is not a Unicode decimal digit. This is the opposite of \d. If the ASCII  flag is used this becomes the equivalent of [^0-9] (but the flag affects the entire regular expression, so in such cases using an explicit [^0-9] may be a better choice).

\s

For Unicode (str) patterns:

Matches Unicode whitespace characters (which includes [ \t\n\r\f\v], and also many other characters, for example the non-breaking spaces mandated by typography rules in many languages). If the ASCII  flag is used, only [ \t\n\r\f\v] is matched (but the flag affects the entire regular expression, so in such cases using an explicit [ \t\n\r\f\v]may be a better choice).

For 8-bit (bytes) patterns:

Matches characters considered whitespace in the ASCII character set; this is equivalent to [ \t\n\r\f\v].

\S

Matches any character which is not a Unicode whitespace character. This is the opposite of \s. If the ASCII  flag is used this becomes the equivalent of [^\t\n\r\f\v] (but the flag affects the entire regular expression, so in such cases using an explicit [^ \t\n\r\f\v] may be a better choice).

\w

For Unicode (str) patterns:

Matches Unicode word characters; this includes most characters that can be part of a word in any language, as well as numbers and the underscore. If the ASCII  flag is used, only [a-zA-Z0-9_] is matched (but the flag affects the entire regular expression, so in such cases using an explicit [a-zA-Z0-9_] may be a better choice).

For 8-bit (bytes) patterns:

Matches characters considered alphanumeric in the ASCII character set; this is equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_].

\W

Matches any character which is not a Unicode word character. This is the opposite of \w. If the ASCII  flag is used this becomes the equivalent of [^a-zA-Z0-9_] (but the flag affects the entire regular expression, so in such cases using an explicit [^a-zA-Z0-9_] may be a better choice).

\Z

Matches only at the end of the string.

Most of the standard escapes supported by Python string literals are also accepted by the regular expression parser:

\a      \b      \f      \n

\r      \t      \u      \U

\v      \x      \\

(Note that \b is used to represent word boundaries, and means “backspace” only inside character classes.)

'\u' and '\U' escape sequences are only recognized in Unicode patterns. In bytes patterns they are not treated specially.

Octal escapes are included in a limited form. If the first digit is a 0, or if there are three octal digits, it is considered an octal escape. Otherwise, it is a group reference. As for string literals, octal escapes are always at most three digits in length.

Changed in version 3.3: The '\u' and '\U' escape sequences have been added.

Changed in version 3.6: Unknown escapes consisting of '\' and an ASCII letter now are errors.

See also

Mastering Regular Expressions

Book on regular expressions by Jeffrey Friedl, published by O’Reilly. The second edition of the book no longer covers Python at all, but the first edition covered writing good regular expression patterns in great detail.