Regex For Matching String With Trailing Whitespace Works In Perl But Not Python

I'm trying to find strings that have trailing whitespace, i.e. 'foo ' as opposed to 'foo'. In Perl, I would use: $str = 'foo '; print 'Match\n' if ($str =~ /\s+$/) ; When I try th

Solution 1:

Use re.search() instead; re.match() only matches at the start of a string. Quoting the re.match() documentation:

If zero or more characters at the beginning of string match the regular expression pattern, return a corresponding MatchObject instance.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, re.match() is the equivalent of the m/.../ match operator in Perl, while re.search() is the same as /.../.

Solution 2:

Because re.match(r'\s+$', str) is equivalent to re.search(r'\A\s+$', str). Use re.search instead.

From docs:

re.match() checks for a match only at the beginning of the string, while re.search() checks for a match anywhere in the string (this is what Perl does by default).