I have been writing a lot of code in both C# and Python lately... flipping back and forth between both languages.  One thing I keep getting tripped up on is the terminology used in regular expression syntax, and what a "match" is.

So for my own disambiguation:

• Python's re.match() is different than C#'s Regex.IsMatch()
• Python's re.search() is similar to C#'s Regex.IsMatch()

Better explained in code:

Using Regex.IsMatch() in C# to match a pattern with some text:

this prints 'Match'

Same thing, using re.match() in Python:

this prints 'No Match'

oops.. didn't get a match. What happened?

match() only checks if the regex matches at the beginning of the string, while search() will scan forward through the string for a match.

If you were expecting the pattern to match anywhere in the string, you need to use re.search() instead:

this prints 'Match'

... or else you must supply a pattern that will match from the beginning of the string:

this prints 'Match'