You can use re.finditer
to iterate over all matches in a string. This gives you (in comparison to re.findall
extra information, such as information about the match location in the string (indexes):
import re
text = 'You can try to find an ant in this string'
pattern = 'an?\w' # find 'an' either with or without a following word character
for match in re.finditer(pattern, text):
# Start index of match (integer)
sStart = match.start()
# Final index of match (integer)
sEnd = match.end()
# Complete match (string)
sGroup = match.group()
# Print match
print('Match "{}" found at: [{},{}]'.format(sGroup, sStart,sEnd))
Result:
Match "an" found at: [5,7]
Match "an" found at: [20,22]
Match "ant" found at: [23,26]