Python re.match doesnt match the same regexp

Question

I'm facing a weird problem; I hope nobody asked this question before I need to match two regexp containing "(" ")".

Here is the kind of tests I made to see why it's not working:

>>> import re
>>> re.match("a","a")
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7467218>

>>> re.match(re.escape("a"),re.escape("a"))
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7467410>

>>> re.escape("a(b)")
'a\\(b\\)'

>>> re.match(re.escape("a(b)"),re.escape("a(b)"))

=> No match

Can someone explain me why the regexp doesn't match itself ?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

You've escaped special characters, so your regex will match the string "a(b)", not the string
'a\(b\)' which is the result of re.escape('a(b)').