import re txt = """Hi my name is Sally""" #Search for a sequence that starts with "me", followed by one character, even a newline character, and continues with "is": print(re.findall("me.is", txt, re.DOTALL)) #This example would return no match without the re.DOTALL flag: print(re.findall("me.is", txt)) #Same result with the shorthand re.S flag: print(re.findall("me.is", txt, re.S))