Is it worth using Python's re.compile?

Question

Is there any benefit in using compile for regular expressions in Python?

h = re.compile(\'hello\')
h.match(\'hello world\')

vs

Answer 1

In general, I find it is easier to use flags (at least easier to remember how), like re.I when compiling patterns than to use flags inline.

>>> foo_pat = re.compile('foo',re.I)
>>> foo_pat.findall('some string FoO bar')
['FoO']

vs

>>> re.findall('(?i)foo','some string FoO bar')
['FoO']

Answer 2

There is one addition perk of using re.compile(), in the form of adding comments to my regex patterns using re.VERBOSE

pattern = '''
hello[ ]world    # Some info on my pattern logic. [ ] to recognize space
'''

re.search(pattern, 'hello world', re.VERBOSE)

Although this does not affect the speed of running your code, I like to do it this way as it is part of my commenting habit. I throughly dislike spending time trying to remember the logic that went behind my code 2 months down the line when I want to make modifications.