__init__ (
        self,
        expression,
        min_count=0,
        max_count=MAXREPEAT,
        )

(expression, min_count = 0, max_count = MAXREPEAT)

Match the expression at least min_count times and no more than max_count times. If max_count == MAXREPEAT then there is no fixed upper limit.

min_count and max_count can be strings, in which case they are used as "named group repeats." That is, they are taken to be group names and used to find the repeat counts during evaluation time. The current implementation only understands named group repeats when min_count == max_count.

The grouping is greedy.

WARNING: There is no check to ensure that a match of 0 size is repeated indefinitely, as with "(a?)*" against the string "b". This will loop forever.

WARNING: The current implementation does not support backtracking in MaxRepeats, so ". " will not match " ". Use a more explicit construct instead, like "[^ ] ".

__str__ ( self )

the corresponding pattern string

_select_names ( self,  names )

internal function: do not use

copy ( self )

do a deep copy on this Expression tree

features ( self )

return a list of all features

group_names ( self )

the list of group names used by this Expression and its children