Whitespace at the end of line is not ignored by python regex

Question

The leading spaces are ignored but the trailing ones are not in the below regular expression code. It's just a "Name = Value" string but with spaces. I thought the \s* after the capture would ignore spaces.

import re
line = "  Name =  Peppa Pig  "
match = re.search(r"\s*(Name)\s*=\s*(.+)\s*", line)
print(match.groups())
>>>('Name', 'Peppa Pig   ')  # Why extra spaces after Pig!

What am I missing?

Answer 1

You're getting trailing spaces because of greedy nature of .+.

You can use this regex to correctly capture your value:

>>> re.search(r"\s*(Name)\s*=\s*(.+?)\s*$", line).groups()
('Name', 'Peppa Pig')

\s*$ ensures we are capturing value before trailing white spaces at end.