How do I return a string from a regex match in python? [duplicate]

I am running through lines in a text file using a python script. I want to search for an img tag within the text document and return the tag as text.

When I run the regex re.match(line) it returns a _sre.SRE_MATCH object. How do I get it to return a string?

import sys
import string
import re

f = open("sample.txt", 'r' )
l = open('writetest.txt', 'w')

count = 1

for line in f:
    line = line.rstrip()
    imgtag  = re.match(r'<img.*?>',line)
    print("yo it's a {}".format(imgtag))

When run it prints:

yo it's a None
yo it's a None
yo it's a None
yo it's a <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e578>
yo it's a None
yo it's a <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e578>
yo it's a None
yo it's a <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e578>
yo it's a <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x7fd4ea90e5e0>
yo it's a None
yo it's a None

Solution 1:

You should use re.MatchObject.group(0). Like

imtag = re.match(r'<img.*?>', line).group(0)

Edit:

You also might be better off doing something like

imgtag  = re.match(r'<img.*?>',line)
if imtag:
    print("yo it's a {}".format(imgtag.group(0)))

to eliminate all the Nones.

Solution 2:

imgtag.group(0) or imgtag.group(). This returns the entire match as a string. You are not capturing anything else either.

http://docs.python.org/release/2.5.2/lib/match-objects.html