Python - finding the longest sequence with findall

Question

found = re.findall("g+", "fggfggggfggfg", re.DOTALL)

I'd like to find a longest matches for a pattern using findall. I've found some solutions but only for re.match or re.finditer. Could anybody give me an advice please?

Answer 1

re.DOTALL does nothing in this case so I've just taken it out for simplicity's sake:

>>> import re
>>> max(re.findall("g+", "fggfggggfggfg"), key=len)
'gggg'

If you need all of them in order of length:

>>> sorted(re.findall("g+", "fggfggggfggfg"), key=len, reverse=True)
['gggg', 'gg', 'gg', 'g']