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Python

Posted by jayda hendrickson
jayda hendrickson
3,413 Points

Regular Expressions

I'm a little confused on the difference between re.finditer() and re.findall(). Can someone please explain it to me?

1 Answer

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,426 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,426 Points

  • re.findall returns a list of resultant strings. This runs to completion before returning results.

  • re.finditer returns an iterable that returns match objects. This stops scanning text until next result is requested.

More info in the docs

>>> import re
>>> for x in re.findall(r"\w+", "a bb ccc dddd eeeee"):
...     print(x)
... 
a
bb
ccc
dddd
eeeee
>>> for x in re.finditer(r"\w+", "a bb ccc dddd eeeee"):
...     print(x)
... 
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x116423b90>
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x116423cc8>
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x116423b90>
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x116423cc8>
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x116423b90>
>>> re.findall(r'\w+', 'a bb ccc dddd eeeee')
[‘a’, ‘bb’, ‘ccc’, ‘dddd’, ‘eeeee’]
>>> for x in re.finditer(r'\w+', 'a bb ccc dddd eeeee'):
...     print(x.group())
... 
a
bb
ccc
dddd
eeeee

Post back if you need more help. Good luck!!!