re.match vs re.search performance difference

Question

I tried to compare re.match and re.search using timeit module and I found that match was better than search when the string I want to foun

Answer 1

On my machine (Python 2.7.3 on Mac OS 10.7.3, 1.7 GHz Intel Core i5), when done putting the string construction, importing re, and the regex compiling in setup, and performing 10000000 iterations instead of 10, I find the opposite:

import timeit

print timeit.timeit(stmt="r.match(s)",
             setup="import re; s = 'helloab'*100000; r = re.compile('hello')",
             number = 10000000)
# 6.43165612221
print timeit.timeit(stmt="r.search(s)",
             setup="import re; s = 'helloab'*100000; r = re.compile('hello')",
            number = 10000000)
# 3.85176897049