The bottom problem, as I see it, is that, historically, `re.search()` returns `None` when there is no match, instead of returning a `Match` object that is consistent with "no match" (evaluates to `False`, etc.)

The above seems too difficult to repair as so much existing code relies on those semantics (`if match is None` is the risky bit). 

Hence, `findall()`, `findalliter()`, and `findfirst()`.