Type of compiled regex object in python

Question

What is the type of the compiled regular expression in python?

In particular, I want to evaluate

isinstance(re.compile(\'\'), ???)

Answer 1

>>> import re
>>> regex = re.compile('foo')
>>> regex
<_sre.SRE_Pattern object at 0x10035d960>

Well - _sre is a C extension doing the pattern matching...you may look in the _sre C source.

Why do you care?

Or you try something like this (for whatever reason - I don't care):

>>> regex1 = re.compile('bar')
>>> regex2 = re.compile('foo')
>>> type(regex1) == type(regex2)
True