re.findall() in Python (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

re.findall() method in Python helps us find all pattern occurrences in a string. It's like searching through a sentence to find every word that matches a specific rule. We can do this using regular expressions (regex) to create the pattern and then use re.findall() to get a list of matches.

Let's say we want to find all words that start with ****"P"** in a string.

Python `

import re

s = "Python is Powerful and Great" result = re.findall(r'\bP\w+', s) print(result)

`

Output

['Python', 'Powerful']

Table of Content

• Syntax of re.findall()
• Case Sensitivity in re.findall()
• Finding numbers using re.findall()
• Matching dates using re.findall()

Syntax of re.findall()

The syntax of **re.findall() is simple:

import re

result = re.findall(pattern, string)

Parameters

• **pattern: The regular expression pattern we are looking for.
• **string: The string where we want to search for the pattern.
• **result: This will be a list of all occurrences of the pattern in the string.

Return

The return type of re.findall() is always a list. This list contains all the non-overlapping matches of the pattern in the string. If no match is found, it will return an empty list.

Case Sensitivity in re.findall()

By default, re.findall() is case-sensitive. To make it case-insensitive, we can pass the re.IGNORECASE flag.

Python `

import re

s = "Python is fun. python is cool." result = re.findall(r'python', s, re.IGNORECASE) print(result)

`

Output

['Python', 'python']

Finding numbers using re.findall()

Here we use a pattern that matches any number. The regular expression \d+ looks for one or more digits in a row. So if the text contains numbers like "12 apples and 5 bananas", it will find ****"12"** and ****"5"** and give us those as the result

Python `

import re

Find all numbers in a string

text = "There are 12 apples, 5 bananas, and 300 oranges."

\d+ matches one or more digits

pattern = r'\d+'
matches = re.findall(pattern, text) print(matches)

`

Matching dates using re.findall()

Here we use a pattern to find dates written in the format YYYY-MM-DD. The regular expression \d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} is designed to find a four-digit year, followed by a two-digit month and a two-digit day. If the text contains "2024-12-25" and "2025-01-15" it will pick them out as matches.

Python `

import re

#Find all dates in YYYY-MM-DD format text = "The event is on 2024-12-25, and the deadline is 2025-01-15."

Matches a date in YYYY-MM-DD format

pattern = r'\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}'

matches = re.findall(pattern, text) print(matches)

`

Output

['2024-12-25', '2025-01-15']