Hmm, that is odd. Doing it with re.search() finds the first phone number, but re.findall() just finds the area codes, like you mentioned.

AH, I see what it is!

OK, so let's go a bit down the rabbit hole, here.

pattern = r'(\d{3}-){2}\d{4}`  # Match three digits followed by a hyphen, twice. Then match 4 digits.
my_string = '111-222-3333, 444-555-6666, 777-888-9999'
re.findall(pattern, my_string)
['111-', '222-', '333-']

Why just the first three numbers and hyphen for each number? Because ( ) is a capturing group and re.findall() is doing what it's supposed to do and returning us the captured groups for each match. We know this by reading the docs:

If one or more groups are present in the pattern, return a list of groups

So how do we fix that? We make the group a non-capturing group. I did not cover this in the course (on purpose) so I obviously don't expect you to solve the problem this way. But, let's see it:

pattern = r'(?:\d{3}-){2}\d{4}

The ?: makes it so it's a group but it doesn't act like a normal group. Again, let's go to the docs:

A non-capturing version of regular parentheses. Matches whatever regular expression is inside the parentheses, but the substring matched by the group cannot be retrieved after performing a match or referenced later in the pattern.

So we can't later reference the group with \1 (again, not covered in the course) and we can't get the group out with .group(1) (this is covered), but we can repeat our match like we want.

Wow, Adiv Abramson, that was quite the trip you sent me on. Thanks! I didn't really understand the non-capturing group trick until now. That's awesome.

But, yes, solve the CC a different way :)