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regex-to-re HOWTO |  |
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While the regex module will continue to be supported for backwards compatibility, there are several reasons to modify your code to use the re module. re provides a more powerful regular expression notation, mostly compatible with Perl's notation, though there are some extensions and omissions. There are new operations in re, such as minimal matching, that cannot be performed using the regex module. re will be the focus of new development and enhancements and improvements in future versions; there are already a few speed optimizations on the TODO list that didn't make it into 1.5.
re code is also automatically thread-safe, while the regex module requires that you explicitly lock pattern objects. (More about this below.)