Yes, but the purpose of this feature is to simplify the use of finditer() in 
the "for" loop.

>>> import re
>>> for k, v in re.finditer(r"(\w+):?(\w+)?", "ab:cd\nef\n"):
...     print(k, v)
... 
ab cd
ef None

Currently you should either unpack manually:

    for m in re.finditer(...):
        k, v = m.groups()
        ...

This way doesn't work well with comprehensions.

Or use the operator module:

    import operator
    for k, v in map(operator.methodcaller('groups'), re.finditer(...)):
        ...

This way is too verbose and unclear.

Sorry, previous version of the patch had reference leak.