Soft-deprecating re.match()
Simon Willison’s Weblog
Subscribe
11th September 2026 - Link Blog
Soft-deprecating re.match(). Python has a concept of soft deprecation, where APIs are marked as "should no longer be used to write new code" without any promise/threat to remove them in the future.
Python 3.15 release manager Hugo van Kemenade describes how in the upcoming 3.15 release soft deprecation has come for the venerable but deeply confusing re.match() function. It's now available with the much clearer alternative re.prefixmatch() name - reflecting how it anchors at the beginning of the string but not the end.
Most of the time you probably want re.search() (match this pattern anywhere in the string) or re.fullmatch() (match the entire string) instead.
Recent articles
Some thoughts on the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem - 8th September 2026
The Pelican comparison grid for Astra is pretty interesting - 4th September 2026
OpenAI's rogue agents were caught communicating via public wikis - 4th September 2026
This is a link post by Simon Willison, posted on 11th September 2026.
python 1,282
regular-expressions 38
Monthly briefing
Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.
Pay me to send you less!
Sponsor & subscribe
Disclosures
Colophon
©
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026