An Introduction to Python re.match() for Beginners

In python, we can use python re.match() to check a string starting with a pattern or not. In this tutorial, we will use some examples to show you how to use this function.

re.match()

re.match() is defined as:

re.match(pattern, string, flags=0)

Here pattern is a string or regular expression. It will check string starting with pattern or not. Here is an exmaple:

import re
text = 'a456abc123'

result = re.match('b', text)
print(type(result))
print(result)
if result:
    print(result.group(0))

Here character b is in text. Run this code, you will get this reuslt:

<class 'NoneType'>
None

result is None, which means text is not started with ‘b‘.

Here is another exmaple code:

import re
text = 'a456abc123'

result = re.match('a4', text)
print(type(result))
print(result)
if result:
    print(result.group(0))

Run this code, the result is:

<class '_sre.SRE_Match'>
<_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 2), match='a4'>
a4

It means text is started with ‘a4‘

Moreover, we also can use re.match() to check text starting with pattern or not.

import re
text = 'a456abc123'

result = re.match('[0-9]{1,3}', text)
print(type(result))
print(result)
if result:
    print(result.group(0))

Here result is also None, which means text is not started with numbers.