Python Regex: re.search() VS re.findall()

Last Updated : 11 Jan, 2022

Prerequisite: Regular Expression with Examples | Python

A Regular expression (sometimes called a Rational expression) is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern, mainly for use in pattern matching with strings, or string matching, i.e. “find and replace”-like operations. Regular expressions are a generalized way to match patterns with sequences of characters.

Module Regular Expressions (RE) specifies a set of strings (pattern) that matches it. To understand the RE analogy, MetaCharacters are useful, important and will be used in functions of module re.

There are a total of 14 metacharacters and will be discussed as they follow into functions:

\   Used to drop the special meaning of character
    following it (discussed below)
[]  Represent a character class
^   Matches the beginning
$   Matches the end
.   Matches any character except newline
?   Matches zero or one occurrence.
|   Means OR (Matches with any of the characters
    separated by it.
*   Any number of occurrences (including 0 occurrences)
+   One or more occurrences
{}  Indicate number of occurrences of a preceding RE 
    to match.
()  Enclose a group of REs

re.search()

re.search() method either returns None (if the pattern doesn’t match), or a re.MatchObject that contains information about the matching part of the string. This method stops after the first match, so this is best suited for testing a regular expression more than extracting data.

Example:

Python3

# A Python program to demonstrate working of re.match().  
import re  
    
# Lets use a regular expression to match a date string  
# in the form of Month name followed by day number  
regex = r"([a-zA-Z]+) (\d+)"
    
match = re.search(regex, "I was born on June 24")  
    
if match != None:  
    
    # We reach here when the expression "([a-zA-Z]+) (\d+)"  
    # matches the date string.  
    
    # This will print [14, 21), since it matches at index 14  
    # and ends at 21.   
    print("Match at index % s, % s" % (match.start(), match.end())) 
    
    # We us group() method to get all the matches and  
    # captured groups. The groups contain the matched values.  
    # In particular:  
    # match.group(0) always returns the fully matched string  
    # match.group(1) match.group(2), ... return the capture  
    # groups in order from left to right in the input string  
    # match.group() is equivalent to match.group(0)  
    
    # So this will print "June 24"  
    print("Full match: % s" % (match.group(0))) 
    
    # So this will print "June"  
    print("Month: % s" % (match.group(1))) 
    
    # So this will print "24"  
    print("Day: % s" % (match.group(2))) 
    
else:  
    print("The regex pattern does not match.") 

Output:

Match at index 14, 21
Full match: June 24
Month: June
Day: 24

re.findall()

Return all non-overlapping matches of pattern in string, as a list of strings. The string is scanned left-to-right, and matches are returned in the order found.

Example:

Python3

# A Python program to demonstrate working of  
# findall()  
import re  
    
# A sample text string where regular expression   
# is searched.  
string = """Hello my Number is 123456789 and  
             my friend's number is 987654321"""
    
# A sample regular expression to find digits.  
regex = '\d+'             
    
match = re.findall(regex, string)  
print(match)  

Output:

['123456789', '987654321']

Suggest improvement

fnmatch - Unix filename pattern matching in Python

Python @staticmethod

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Python Regex: re.search() VS re.findall()

re.search()

Python3

re.findall()

Python3

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