search in python

http://www.python-course.eu/re.php

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/180986/what-is-the-difference-between-pythons-re-search-and-re-match

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13423624/extract-string-with-python-re-match

basic regular expression use:
re.match("ab", "abc").group()


Note that match may differ from search even when using a regular expression beginning with '^': '^' matches only at the start of the string, or in MULTILINE mode also immediately following a newline. The “match” operation succeeds only if the pattern matches at the start of the string regardless of mode, or at the starting position given by the optional pos argument regardless of whether a newline precedes it.

# match is faster: it always/only searches from the beginning of a string.  This fixed criteria makes the search faster.