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Author serhiy.storchaka
Recipients ezio.melotti, mrabarnett, serhiy.storchaka
Date 2017-11-18.11:12:26
SpamBayes Score -1.0
Marked as misclassified Yes
Message-id <1511003547.89.0.213398074469.issue32067@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
In-reply-to
Content
Currently `{m}`, `{m,n}`, `{m,}` and `{,n}` where m and n are non-negative decimal numbers are accepted in regular expressions as quantifiers that mean repeating the previous RE from m (0 by default) to n (infinity by default) times.

But if the opening brace '{'is not followed by one of the above patterns, it means just the literal '{'.

>>> import re
>>> re.search('(foobar){e}', 'xirefoabralfobarxie')
>>> re.search('(foobar){e}', 'foobar{e}')
<re.Match object; span=(0, 9), match='foobar{e}'>

This conflicts with the regex module which uses braces for defining the "fuzzy" matching.

>>> import regex
>>> regex.search('(foobar){e}', 'xirefoabralfobarxie')
<regex.Match object; span=(0, 6), match='xirefo', fuzzy_counts=(6, 0, 0)>
>>> regex.search('(foobar){e}', 'foobar{e}')
<regex.Match object; span=(0, 6), match='foobar'>

I don't think it is worth to add support of fuzzy matching in the re module, but for compatibility it would be better to raise an error or a warning in case of '{' not following by the one of the recognized patterns. This could also help to catch typos and errors in regular expressions, i.e. in '-{1.2}' or '-{1, 2}' instead of '-{1,2}'.

Possible variants:

1. Emit a DeprecationWarning in 3.7 (and 2.7.15 with the -3 option), raise a re.error in 3.8 or 3.9.

2. Emit a PendingDeprecationWarning in 3.7, a DeprecationWarning in 3.8, and raise a re.error in 3.9 or 3.10.

3. Emit a RuntimeWarning or SyntaxWarning in 3.7 and forever.

4. Emit a FutureWarning in 3.7, and implement the fuzzy matching or replace re with regex sometimes in future. Unlikely.
History
Date User Action Args
2017-11-18 11:12:27serhiy.storchakasetrecipients: + serhiy.storchaka, ezio.melotti, mrabarnett
2017-11-18 11:12:27serhiy.storchakasetmessageid: <1511003547.89.0.213398074469.issue32067@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2017-11-18 11:12:27serhiy.storchakalinkissue32067 messages
2017-11-18 11:12:26serhiy.storchakacreate