Is there any benefit in using compile for regular expressions in Python?
h = re.compile(\'hello\')
h.match(\'hello world\')
vs
Besides the performance.
Using compile helps me to distinguish the concepts of
1. module(re),
2. regex object
3. match object
When I started learning regex
#regex object
regex_object = re.compile(r'[a-zA-Z]+')
#match object
match_object = regex_object.search('1.Hello')
#matching content
match_object.group()
output:
Out[60]: 'Hello'
V.S.
re.search(r'[a-zA-Z]+','1.Hello').group()
Out[61]: 'Hello'
As a complement, I made an exhaustive cheatsheet of module re for your reference.
regex = {
'brackets':{'single_character': ['[]', '.', {'negate':'^'}],
'capturing_group' : ['()','(?:)', '(?!)' '|', '\\', 'backreferences and named group'],
'repetition' : ['{}', '*?', '+?', '??', 'greedy v.s. lazy ?']},
'lookaround' :{'lookahead' : ['(?=...)', '(?!...)'],
'lookbehind' : ['(?<=...)','(?...)', '(?P=name)', '(?:)'],},
'escapes':{'anchor' : ['^', '\b', '$'],
'non_printable' : ['\n', '\t', '\r', '\f', '\v'],
'shorthand' : ['\d', '\w', '\s']},
'methods': {['search', 'match', 'findall', 'finditer'],
['split', 'sub']},
'match_object': ['group','groups', 'groupdict','start', 'end', 'span',]
}