import re text_to_search = ''' abcdefghijklmnopqurtuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890 Ha HaHa MetaCharacters (Need to be escaped): . ^ $ * + ? { } [ ] \ | ( ) coreyms.com 321-555-4321 123.555.1234 123*555*1234 800-555-1234 900-555-1234 Mr. Schafer Mr Smith Ms Davis Mrs. Robinson Mr. T ''' sentence = 'Start a sentence and then bring it to an end' pattern = re.compile(r'start', re.I) matches = pattern.search(sentence) print(matches)