How can it happens?

Question

If a match found in the string then the match() function will return an object representing the match. The match is a string, am i right ? How a string can be an object?

Answer 1

Amit Ranjan Sahoo In low-level languages like 'C', there is no data-type known as a 'string'; they're just represented as an array of characters, which is what it actually is. In Python, 'str' is a class (a variable that stores the reference to the string-class, accurately speaking). This class includes all the string properties and methods like __class__, isalpha(), etcetera along with the character array which makes up the string (a lot more are there). Whenever a string is created, an instance of this class is made in the heap and the reference to it returned. Everything is an object in Python.

P.S. I guess that the real question was to know what the match function returns. It returns a match object, btw.

Answer 2

Amit Ranjan Sahoo The "match object" is NOT a string. Rather it's an instance of the Match class:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#match-objects

You can see this better in a simple example:
https://code.sololearn.com/coW3Ue21BrNk/?ref=app

Answer 3

Amit Ranjan Sahoo All objects other than "", 0, [], {}, None, 0.0 and False have a boolean value of 1 (True). So,

if 'adf':
print("This will be printed")
else:
print("This won't be printed")

# Hope this helps

Answer 4

Calvin Thomas
Means it returns a string !

Answer 5

Calvin Thomas

Please tell me that if re.match() returns an object then how
"If statement" is working?

Answer 6

David Carroll
Hmm thanks

Answer 7

Calvin Thomas
Yes now i understood 😀

Answer 8

Amit Ranjan Sahoo Well, since 'string' means an object in Python, yeah.