Incidentally, here's how I might write that URL regex with comprehensibility outweighing all else. Notice that I enable free-spacing [0], which can usually be e

Incidentally, here's how I might write that URL regex with comprehensibility outweighing all else. Notice that I enable free-spacing [0], which can usually be enabled by passing a flag rather than embedding it in the regex. In Python, the re.X (or re.VERBOSE) flag does the job. (?x) # free-spacing (?P<protocol> [a-z]{3,10} ) :// # http:// (?P<domain> [^/?#]* ) # google.com (?P<path> [^?#]* ) # /path/to/resource (\? (?P<query> [^#]* ))? # ?id=123 (\# (?P<fragment> .* ))? # #section [0] https://www.regular-expressions.info/freespacing.html https://www.regular-expressions.info/freespacing.html