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Author aresnick
Recipients aresnick, georg.brandl
Date 2009-01-08.15:35:45
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Message-id <1231428946.66.0.0747408022841.issue4882@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
In-reply-to
Content
I recently learned about named groups in Python regular expressions. 
Almost all the documentation I've found online explains what they are
and give a simple example of how to use them.  I was trying to use the
variables outside of the original regex, later in the code.  Nowhere in
the documentation I found after a couple hours of searching was it
mentioned that named groups can only be backreferenced _within_ the pattern.

In particular, the sections at
http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/#SECTION000530000000000000000 and
the description of the (?P<name>) behavior at
http://docs.python.org/library/re.html could be modified to make it
clear that the named capture does not create a variable usable outside
of the pattern.

I would be happy to alter the documentation appropriately.
History
Date User Action Args
2009-01-08 15:35:46aresnicksetrecipients: + aresnick, georg.brandl
2009-01-08 15:35:46aresnicksetmessageid: <1231428946.66.0.0747408022841.issue4882@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2009-01-08 15:35:46aresnicklinkissue4882 messages
2009-01-08 15:35:45aresnickcreate