Yes. If you are going for equivalent, this would be it: pat = re.compile(r'^ [a-z] [a-z0-9]* @ [a-z]+ \. [a-z]+ $', re.I | re.X) I took a few liberties in c

Yes. If you are going for equivalent, this would be it: pat = re.compile(r'^ [a-z] [a-z0-9]* @ [a-z]+ \. [a-z]+ $', re.I | re.X) I took a few liberties in crafting the reduction.