Regex matching except whitespace in Python

Question

I am looking to match on a white space followed by anything except whitespace [i.e. letters, punctuation] at the start of a line in Python. For example:

 ` a`  = True
 ` .` = True
 `  a`  = False    [double whitespace]
 `ab` = False      [no whitespace]

The rule re.match(" \w") works except with punctuation - how do i include that?

Answer 1

Remember the following:

\s\S

• \s is whitespace
• \S is everything but whitespace