How can I get part of regex match as a variable in python?

Question

In Perl it is possible to do something like this (I hope the syntax is right...):

$string =~ m/lalala(I want this part)lalala/;
$whatIWant = $1;

Answer 1

If you want to get parts by name you can also do this:

>>> m = re.match(r"(?P\w+) (?P\w+)", "Malcom Reynolds")
>>> m.groupdict()
{'first_name': 'Malcom', 'last_name': 'Reynolds'}

The example was taken from the re docs