What is the difference between re.search and re.findall ? What is the meaning of re.VERBOSE ?

According to the python re docs,

• re.search(pattern, string, flags=0)

Scan through string looking for the first location where the regular expression pattern produces a match, and return a corresponding match object. Return None if no position in the string matches the pattern; note that this is different from finding a zero-length match at some point in the string.

• re.findall(pattern, string, flags=0)

Return all non-overlapping matches of pattern in string, as a list of strings. The string is scanned left-to-right, and matches are returned in the order found. If one or more groups are present in the pattern, return a list of groups; this will be a list of tuples if the pattern has more than one group. Empty matches are included in the result unless they touch the beginning of another match.

Make the '.' special character match any character at all, including a newline; without this flag, '.' will match anything except a newline.

• re.X / re.VERBOSE

This flag allows you to write regular expressions that look nicer and are more readable by allowing you to visually separate logical sections of the pattern and add comments. Whitespace within the pattern is ignored, except when in a character class or when preceded by an unescaped backslash. When a line contains a # that is not in a character class and is not preceded by an unescaped backslash, all characters from the leftmost such # through the end of the line are ignored.

This means that the two following regular expression objects that match a decimal number are functionally equal:

a = re.compile(r"""\d +  # the integral part
                   \.    # the decimal point
                   \d *  # some fractional digits""", re.X)
b = re.compile(r"\d+\.\d*")
re.search(pattern, string, flags=0)