how to match whitespace and alphanumeric characters in python

Question

I'm trying to match a string that has a space in the middle and alphanumeric characters like so:

test = django cms

I have tried matching using the following pattern:

patter = '\s'

unfortunately that only matches whitespace, so when a match is found using the search method in the re object, it only returns the whitespace, but not the entire string, how can I change the pattern so that it returns the entire string when finding a match?

Solution

import re

test = "this matches"
match = re.match('(\w+\s\w+)', test)
print match.groups()

returns

('this matches',)

Comments

[John Machin]

(1) redundant parentheses (2) the OP is using search() not match()

[BasedRebel]

@John Machin: (1) to my way of thinking the parentheses emphasize that the entire group is returned; (2) it will work equally well with re.search().

[Jake Anderson]

The above regex will work if there is exactly one space in the phrase but I'd suggest changing it to this to match any amount of whitespace-separated words: match = re.match("([\w|\s]+)", test)