Is it worth using Python's re.compile?

Question

Is there any benefit in using compile for regular expressions in Python?

h = re.compile(\'hello\')
h.match(\'hello world\')

vs

Answer 1

I really respect all the above answers. From my opinion Yes! For sure it is worth to use re.compile instead of compiling the regex, again and again, every time.

Using re.compile makes your code more dynamic, as you can call the already compiled regex, instead of compiling again and aagain. This thing benefits you in cases:

1. Processor Efforts
2. Time Complexity.
3. Makes regex Universal.(can be used in findall, search, match)
4. And makes your program looks cool.

Example :

  example_string = "The room number of her room is 26A7B."
  find_alpha_numeric_string = re.compile(r"\b\w+\b")

Using in Findall

 find_alpha_numeric_string.findall(example_string)

Using in search

  find_alpha_numeric_string.search(example_string)

Similarly you can use it for: Match and Substitute