Python: Getting text of a Regex match

Question

I have a regex match object in Python. I want to get the text it matched. Say if the pattern is '1.3', and the search string is 'abc123xyz', I want to get '123'. How can I do that?

I know I can use match.string[match.start():match.end()], but I find that to be quite cumbersome (and in some cases wasteful) for such a basic query.

Is there a simpler way?

Answer 1

You can simply use the match object's group function, like:

match = re.search(r"1.3", "abc123xyz")
if match:
    doSomethingWith(match.group(0))

to get the entire match. EDIT: as thg435 points out, you can also omit the 0 and just call match.group().

Addtional note: if your pattern contains parentheses, you can even get these submatches, by passing 1, 2 and so on to group().