Python Regex doesn't work as expected

Question

i\'ve crafted this regular expression:

\\\\n<(\\w+)>(.+?)\\\\n

to parse the foll

Answer 1

Before the regex compiler sees a string, Python has already processed the slash-escapes, therefore you'd have to escape it twice (e.g. \\\\n for \\n). However, Python has a handy notation for exactly this sort of thing, just stick an r before the string:

regex = re.compile(r"""\\n<(\w+)>(.+?)\\n""")

By the way, I agree with the others here, do not use regexes to parse XML. However, hopefully you will find this string notation helpful in future regular expressions.