Summary

This commit adds the pos and endpos parameters to the following
top-level re module functions:

• re.match()
• re.fullmatch()
• re.search()
• re.findall()
• re.finditer()

Prior to this commit, the pos and endpos parameters were only
available to users by first compiling a pattern using re.compile.
Adding these optional arguments standardizes the behavior between
the two and prevents users from being forced to compile if they wish
to use the pos/endpos arguments.

Additionally, this commit:

• Adds tests to cover keyword argument combinations
• Updates re.rst documentation as follows:
  • Adds String Indexing Arguments section covering pos/endpos
  • Adds a Special Characters section to improve discoverability
  • Update docs to reflect actual Pattern method signatures

Rationale

There are a number of methods in the Python Regex Pattern class
that support optional string indexing parameters (pos/endpos):

• Pattern.match(string[, pos[, endpos]])
• Pattern.fullmatch(string[, pos[, endpos]])
• Pattern.search(string[, pos[, endpos]])
• Pattern.findall(string[, pos[, endpos]])
• Pattern.finditer(string[, pos[, endpos]])

Additionally, Python provides access to these Pattern methods as
top-level convenience functions in the module itself:

• re.match()
• re.fullmatch()
• re.search()
• re.findall()
• re.finditer()

However, these top-level convenience functions do not support the
optional arguments. If anyone wants to utilize the optional parameters,
they must first compile a pattern with re.compile() and then call
the method with the optional arguments.

But all the top-level convenience functions do is compile the pattern,
and then execute the pattern, as seen here:

def search(pattern, string, flags=0):
    """Scan through string looking for a match to the pattern, returning
    a Match object, or None if no match was found."""
    return _compile(pattern, flags).search(string)

Looking at the underlying C Code for these methods, the method defines
pos and endpos as 0 and PY_SSIZE_T_MAX respectively. It only
changes the values if the arg parser detects the presence of either
pos or endpos.

Here is an example from the match function, indentation adjusted
for readability:

static PyObject *
_sre_SRE_Pattern_match(PatternObject *self, PyTypeObject *cls, PyObject
*const *args, Py_ssize_t nargs, PyObject *kwnames)
{
    (...)
    Py_ssize_t pos = 0;
    Py_ssize_t endpos = PY_SSIZE_T_MAX;
    (...)
    pos = ival;
    (...)
    endpos = ival;
    (...)
    return_value = _sre_SRE_Pattern_match_impl(self, cls, string, pos, endpos);
}

This commit adds pos=0 and endpos=sys.maxsize to match the
internal behavior of the underlying C code.

Additional Documentation Updates

Add Special Characters section to re docs

Add special characters section to docs to enable finding via the
table of contents and make discoverability easier.

Update Pattern method signatures to reflect actual behavior

The current docs for Pattern.search/match/matchall/finditer/findall
imply that pos/endpos are positional arguments only. But, in
fact, they support keyword assignment, as seen:

>>> import re
>>> pattern = re.compile('abc')
>>> pattern.search('012abc678', pos=3)
<re.Match object; span=(3, 6), match='abc'>
>>> pattern.search('012abc678', endpos=6)
<re.Match object; span=(3, 6), match='abc'>
>>> pattern.search('012abc678', pos=3, endpos=6)
<re.Match object; span=(3, 6), match='abc'>

The interactive help also shows this:

>>> help(pattern.search)
Help on built-in function search:

search(string, pos=0, endpos=9223372036854775807) method of re.Pattern instance
    Scan through string looking for a match, and return a corresponding
    match object instance.

    Return None if no position in the string matches.
(END)

• Issue: Top-level functions of re.module should support the string indexing pos/endpos arguments #113304

📚 Documentation preview 📚: https://cpython-previews--113306.org.readthedocs.build/