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Rewrite re.VERBOSE section.
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It now has slightly better rationale and a less awkward wording in the
explanation.

Inspired by a report of a neither/or conflict by 'animalize' on docs@.
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zware committed Nov 12, 2015
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16 changes: 9 additions & 7 deletions Doc/library/re.rst
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Expand Up @@ -548,13 +548,15 @@ form.
.. data:: X
VERBOSE

This flag allows you to write regular expressions that look nicer. Whitespace
within the pattern is ignored, except when in a character class or preceded by
an unescaped backslash, and, when a line contains a ``'#'`` neither in a
character class or preceded by an unescaped backslash, all characters from the
leftmost such ``'#'`` through the end of the line are ignored.

That means that the two following regular expression objects that match a
This flag allows you to write regular expressions that look nicer and are
more readable by allowing you to visually separate logical sections of the
pattern and add comments. Whitespace within the pattern is ignored, except
when in a character class or when preceded by an unescaped backslash.
When a line contains a ``#`` that is not in a character class and is not
preceded by an unescaped backslash, all characters from the leftmost such
``#`` through the end of the line are ignored.

This means that the two following regular expression objects that match a
decimal number are functionally equal::

a = re.compile(r"""\d + # the integral part
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