Yes, the dot regex matches whitespace characters when using Python’s re module.
Consider the following example:
import re
string = 'The Dot Regex Matches Whitespace Characters'
match = re.findall('.', string)
print(match)
'''
['T', 'h', 'e', ' ',
'D', 'o', 't', ' ',
'R', 'e', 'g', 'e', 'x', ' ',
'M', 'a', 't', 'c', 'h', 'e', 's', ' ',
'W', 'h', 'i', 't', 'e', 's', 'p', 'a', 'c', 'e', ' ',
'C', 'h', 'a', 'r', 'a', 'c', 't', 'e', 'r', 's']
'''Try it yourself in our interactive Python shell (click “run”):
The dot matches all characters in the string–including whitespaces. You can see that there are many whitespace characters ' ' among the matched characters.
Need more info? Watch the simple tutorial video about the dot regex if you need more clarifications:
Note that the dot matches whitespace characters in all other regular expression languages I have found on the web—no matter the programming language or framework.
Do you want to master the regex superpower? Check out my new book The Smartest Way to Learn Regular Expressions in Python with the innovative 3-step approach for active learning: (1) study a book chapter, (2) solve a code puzzle, and (3) watch an educational chapter video.
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