How do you match a literal dot (.) in a regular expression using Python?

Matching a Dot with Regular Expressions

When attempting to match "test.this" within a string like "blah blah blah [email protected] blah blah" using Python, one may initially consider using the regex pattern ".w.w@". However, this approach would have limitations.

A dot (.) in regular expressions serves a special purpose as a metacharacter, indicating a match for any character. To match a literal dot within a raw Python string (denoted by r"" or r''), it is necessary to escape it. This can be achieved using the following pattern: r"."

When using this escaped pattern, the regular expression becomes r".w.w@", which can be used to successfully extract "test.this" from the given string. This approach ensures a precise match for the desired pattern.

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