CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexunicodematchcharacter-properties
ak.
ak.

Reputation: 3449

Python regex with unicode characters bug?

Long story short:

>>> re.compile(r"\w*").match(u"Français")
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x1004246b0>
>>> re.compile(r"^\w*$").match(u"Français")
>>> re.compile(r"^\w*$").match(u"Franais")
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x100424780>
>>>

Why doesn't it match the string with unicode characters with ^ and $ in the regex? As far as I understand ^ stands for the beginning of the string(line) and $ - for the end of it.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 904

Answers (1)

kennytm
kennytm

Reputation: 523264

You need to specify the UNICODE flag, otherwise \w is just equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_], which does not include the character 'ç'.

>>> re.compile(r"^\w*$", re.U).match(u"Fran\xe7ais")
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x101474168>

Upvotes: 5

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