Why do we use question mark literal in Python regular expression?
The question mark literal is used in different ways in Python Regular Expressions
Special character '?'
As a special character '?' causes the resulting RE to match 0 or 1 repetitions of the preceding RE. ab? will match either ‘a’ or ‘ab’
The question mark literal '?' is used following ways as per Python docs.
Making the quantifier non-greedy
*?, +?, ??
The '*', '+', and '?' qualifiers are all greedy; they match as much text as possible. Sometimes this behaviour isn’t desired; if the RE <.*> is matched against '<a> b <c>', it will match the entire string, and not just '<a>'. Adding ? after the qualifier makes it perform the match in non-greedy or minimal fashion; as few characters as possible will be matched. Using the RE <.*?> will match only '<a>'.
Published on 11-Jan-2018 11:36:53
