PCAP Strings Practice Question
Exhibit
Refer to the exhibit. Configuration block: ```python import re pattern = r'\b[A-Z][a-z]*\b' text = "Alice and Bob are friends." matches = re.findall(pattern, text) ```
What is the value of matches?
⚠ Common exam trap
Python Institute often tests the misconception that `[a-z]*` matches any sequence of letters, but the pattern requires the first character to be uppercase, causing candidates to incorrectly include all words or miss the second capitalized word.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
['Alice', 'Bob']
The `re.findall(r'[A-Z][a-z]*', 'Alice and Bob are friends')` call matches all sequences starting with an uppercase letter followed by zero or more lowercase letters. This yields 'Alice' and 'Bob', as they are the only words beginning with a capital letter. The result is a list of those two strings.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
['Alice', 'Bob']
Why this is correct
This is correct because the regex pattern likely uses a character class such as [A-Z] to require an initial uppercase letter followed by word characters, and `re.findall()` returns every non-overlapping match in the string. Both 'Alice' and 'Bob' begin with uppercase letters and consist entirely of alphabetic characters, so they are the complete set of matching substrings. No other word in the input starts with an uppercase letter, so no additional tokens qualify.
- ✗
['Alice']
Why it's wrong here
This is wrong because it lists only 'Alice', thereby omitting 'Bob' even though 'Bob' also starts with an uppercase letter and fully satisfies the same matching criteria. Such a result would occur if the code used `re.search()` or `re.match()` instead of `re.findall()`, since those functions return at most the first match rather than all matches. Since the question asks for the value of all matches, all qualifying substrings must be included.
- ✗
['Alice', 'and', 'Bob', 'are', 'friends']
Why it's wrong here
This is wrong because it includes 'and', 'are', and 'friends', none of which begin with an uppercase letter. A pattern that requires an uppercase starting character, for example `[A-Z][a-z]*`, will not match those lowercase-initial words, so they should be excluded from the list of matches. This result would be expected only if the pattern were case-insensitive or if the string were simply split into tokens without applying the uppercase filter.
- ✗
['Alice', 'Bob', 'friends']
Why it's wrong here
This is wrong because, although 'Alice' and 'Bob' are valid matches, 'friends' is not: its first character is a lowercase 'f', so it fails the uppercase-start requirement that the pattern enforces. Consequently, the result set includes one non-matching token while still capturing the two correct matches. This is over-inclusive and does not represent the value returned by `re.findall()` with a case-sensitive pattern.
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