This Week at Bungie, we had to fix the timeline.

Earlier this week, when we deployed 2.7.1, we discovered an issue causing players to lose various currencies. Our team immediately took action and brought the game down for maintenance while we worked to discover the source of the issue. We did this to minimize any further impact to players. We ended up doing the first-ever character rollback in Destiny’s history to ensure that no one lost any of their hard-earned materials. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused by the unexpected maintenance and appreciated everyone’s patience while we worked to get the game back online.

We’ll continue to improve our efforts to minimize issues and downtime. Even though some bugs are always going to crawl through the cracks, we’ll be waiting on the other side with a swatter.

Empyrean Foundation

Next week, the Empyrean Foundation rebuild effort begins. Saint-14 will ask all Guardians to contribute to building a beacon that will be a foundation for things to come next Season. The Tower Obelisk will be the focal point of this event, so make sure you have it unlocked and ready to go as it’s going to have some hefty benefits to take advantage of.

Players will need to come together and contribute resources towards a common goal. To participate, players can donate their Fractaline using the Tower Obelisk. The event will have seven stages, each requiring increasing amounts of Fractaline to progress through. There will also be a hologram at the Tower Obelisk where you’ll be able to track the community’s progress in game.

Of course we aren’t going to ask you to fork over your hard-earned Fractaline without providing some benefits. Here’s what’s in it for you:

• Contributing to the Empyrean Foundation costs 100 Polarized Fractaline.
• Contributing generates a 25% flat progression for all Timelost weapon bounties in your inventory.
• Your Tower Obelisk will generate Polarized Fractaline for you each week equivalent to its Resonance Power.
• Increase its Resonance Power by upgrading other Obelisks
• Players who donate more than 5,000 Polarized Fractaline before the end of the Season will earn a Triumph and emblem.

Everyone in the community will also receive a shader when all stages are completed. Here’s a look at community goals for the seven stages.

Stage 1: 400,000,000

Stage 2: 700,000,000

Stage 3: 1,200,000,000

Stage 4: ???

Stage 5: ???

Stage 6: ???

Stage 7: ???

Everyone is welcome to contribute. This event will be available to all Destiny 2 players and doesn’t require the Season Pass. You can start prepping this week by stockpiling Fractaline and making sure that your Tower Obelisk is powered up and ready to go.

Prime Time

Yesterday, we announced that we are teaming up with Twitch Prime to deliver in-game rewards to Destiny 2 players with an active Prime membership. We are planning to have six monthly drops, with each drop containing four rewards.

The first gear drop is live now and will be available until February 25. It includes the SUROS Regime Auto Rifle, the Coup de Main Ornament, the Skyline Flipside Exotic Ghost Shell, and the unsecured/OUTCRY Exotic ship.

Guardian Giveaways

This week, the Bungie Store is celebrating Guardians everywhere with a giveaway contest featuring curated collections of Destiny gear, including sold-out Shadowkeep Collector’s Editions signed by the Bungie team. For a limited time, a variety of discounted merchandise bundles are available on bungiestore.com and eu.bungiestore.com.

To enter, follow @BungieStore on Twitter, retweet the current giveaway post and add #GuardianGiveaways. The contest ends February 4, 2020 8:59 AM PST. Entries from EU, UK, USA, & CN only (see Rules for excluded provinces and states). 18+ to enter. Please see the Official Rules for more information.

Guardians for Australia

Our “Guardians for Australia” T-shirt is still available for pre-order on the Bungie Store and Bungie Store EU. Half of all profits generated by these T-shirt sales will be donated to NSW Rural Fire Service. The second half will be donated to WIRES, Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organization.

Purchase of the shirt also includes an exclusive Destiny 2 “Star Light, Star Bright” emblem. Thanks for helping us support Australia’s firefighting and animal rescue efforts.

Rollback to the Future

Player Support has a key role of working with the entire team to make sure you are aware of deployments and efforts to restore service during outages.

This is their report.

UPDATE 2.7.1 AND ROLLING BACK ACCOUNTS

After Update 2.7.1 went live on Tuesday, January 28, the Player Support team began noticing a trend of topics where users had lost various Destiny 2 currencies and infusion materials. After verifying this issue, it was decided by several Bungie teams to take the game down in an attempt to prevent more players from being affected.

Due to the rollback:

After the rollback completed, Destiny 2 server came back online around 7:00 PM PST. We are continuing to investigate why this issue occurred and may provide more information about it in the future.

TWITCH PRIME SUPPORT

To receive the gear drops mentioned in the Prime Time section above, players will need an active Amazon Prime account, Bungie.net account, and a Destiny 2 account. Once these accounts are linked, players can claim their drops on the Destiny 2 Twitch Prime website, then log into Destiny 2 and speak to Amanda Holliday in the Tower Hangar to claim the drops.

CURRENT KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Year of the Rat Kings

You ever see a video so funny that you sprayed milk out of your nose? I haven’t, but I have a strict no-drinking-milk-while-watching-videos policy. Take a look at our winning movie this week (and careful with the milk!)

Movie of the Week: Rat Attack

Honorable Mention: Awakening

Movie of the Week winners will find a new emblem in their collections. Just make sure to put a link to your Bungie.net profile pages if you win so we know where to send them. We’ll pick our favorite video from anywhere on the safe-for-work internet where Destiny videos are posted. But if you really want that emblem, the best place to submit your video is the Community Creations page.

When you read this, I’ll be traveling to visit family in Texas and Oklahoma next week. But don’t worry, the Community team has been growing fat with strength and will have everything covered while I’m out. I won’t be fully out of action though. I’ll be contributing to the Empyrean Foundation community event from the road using Stadia.

We look forward to watching the community mobilize in force to answer our challenge. We always try to set the bar high, since you have crushed our expectations in the past. Let’s see what you got this time.

<3 Cozmo

Despite ongoing rumours about a pro model Switch arriving at some point this year, Nintendo hasn’t said a thing about it. If it does exist, though, don’t expect it to be released anytime soon.

During the company’s latest financial results briefing today, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said there were “no plans” to launch a new Switch model in 2020.

Regarding Nintendo Switch, we believe that it is important to continue to communicate the appeal of both Nintendo Switch systems and expand the installed base. Please note that we have no plans to launch a new Nintendo Switch model during 2020.

As explained by Furukawa, Nintendo will instead focus on the appeal of its existing line of Switch systems – this includes the original model and the Lite model, which was launched in September last year.

Earlier today, Nintendo announced a new Animal Crossing: New Horizons themed Switch, which will no doubt increase sales of the original model. It arrives in North America on 13th March, and in Europe and Japan on 20th March.

Were you hoping to see a new pro model Switch released this year? Comment down below.

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Seattle, Washington

Amazon Game Studios is looking for a Senior Gameplay Engineer to join an exciting new project at our Seattle studio. We are an innovative, player-focused team, working on big-bets in an innovative environment. As a senior member of the team, you will work alongside production, design, art, and engineering to create fun and memorable game experiences.

What you’ll do:

• Work as part of our gameplay team in a highly collaborative environment
• Design, prototype and fully implement new gameplay systems and game features
• Create and maintain reliable, scalable, and high-performance systems and tools to enable gameplay experiences
• BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related technical discipline or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of professional software development experience
• 2+ shipped titles
• 3+ years experience in any of the following: physics, inputs, AI, sound, engine, game systems, tooling, or optimizations.
• 5+ years experience in either C, C++, or C#.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Strong 2D/3D math.
• Intuitive understanding of action gameplay and design.
• Capable of quick prototyping and rapid iteration to ‘find the fun’.
• Passionate gamer.
• Experience with Unity or Unreal Engine.
• Experience with scripting languages such as Python or Lua and visual scripting tools.
• Capable of debugging optimized code.
• Meets/exceeds Amazon’s leadership principles requirements for this role.
• Meets/exceeds Amazon’s functional/technical depth and complexity for this role.

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

In this 2018 GDC session, composer C. Paul Johnson and Bungie’s Skye Lewin and Michael Sechrist explain how the audio team confronted the challenges of scope and scale while designing the score and musical approach for Destiny 2.

It was an insightful session in which the pair discussed how their team tackled those challenges while maintaining their quality bar, minimizing repetition, and maintaining dramatic linearity in their score.

Their talk was well worth watching, even if you aren’t a big Destiny 2 fan, so don’t miss your opportunity to do so for free now that it’s been made freely available to watch over on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page.

Serebii Update: On Pokémon Day (February 27th), a brand new Mythical Pokémon is to be revealed. This Pokémon will feature in Sword & Shield and the movie Pokémon the Movie: Coco.
Special Max Raid Battles, GO events & Masters info will also run. Details @ https://t.co/gDbXkIa6cr pic.twitter.com/wq3Od4XuC3

— Serebii.net (@SerebiiNet) January 31, 2020

Every computer scientist knows the asterisk quantifier of regular expressions. But many non-techies know it, too. Each time you search for a text file *.txt on your computer, you use the asterisk operator.

This article is all about the asterisk * quantifier in Python’s re library. Study it carefully and master this important piece of knowledge once and for all!

Alternatively, you can also watch the video where I lead you through the whole article:

What’s the Python Re * Quantifier?

When applied to regular expression A, Python’s A* quantifier matches zero or more occurrences of A. The * quantifier is called asterisk operator and it always applies only to the preceding regular expression. For example, the regular expression ‘yes*’ matches strings ‘ye’, ‘yes’, and ‘yesssssss’. But it does not match the empty string because the asterisk quantifier * does not apply to the whole regex ‘yes’ but only to the preceding regex ‘s’.

Let’s study two basic examples to help you gain a deeper understanding. Do you get all of them?

>>> import re

>>> text = 'finxter for fast and fun python learning'

>>> re.findall('f.* ', text)

['finxter for fast and fun python ']

>>> re.findall('f.*? ', text)

['finxter ', 'for ', 'fast ', 'fun ']

>>> re.findall('f[a-z]*', text)

['finxter', 'for', 'fast', 'fun']

>>> 

Don’t worry if you had problems understanding those examples. You’ll learn about them next. Here’s the first example:

Greedy Asterisk Example

>>> re.findall('f.* ', text)

['finxter for fast and fun python ']

You use the re.findall() method. In case you don’t know it, here’s the definition from the Finxter blog article:

The re.findall(pattern, string) method finds all occurrences of the pattern in the string and returns a list of all matching substrings.

Please consult the blog article to learn everything you need to know about this fundamental Python method.

The first argument is the regular expression pattern ‘f.* ‘. The second argument is the string to be searched for the pattern. In plain English, you want to find all patterns in the string that start with the character ‘f’, followed by an arbitrary number of optional characters, followed by an empty space.

The findall() method returns only one matching substring: ‘finxter for fast and fun python ‘. The asterisk quantifier * is greedy. This means that it tries to match as many occurrences of the preceding regex as possible. So in our case, it wants to match as many arbitrary characters as possible so that the pattern is still matched. Therefore, the regex engine “consumes” the whole sentence.

Non-Greedy Asterisk Example

But what if you want to find all words starting with an ‘f’? In other words: how to match the text with a non-greedy asterisk operator?

The second example is the following:

>>> re.findall('f.*? ', text)

['finxter ', 'for ', 'fast ', 'fun ']

In this example, you’re looking at a similar pattern with only one difference: you use the non-greedy asterisk operator *?. You want to find all occurrences of character ‘f’ followed by an arbitrary number of characters (but as few as possible), followed by an empty space.

Therefore, the regex engine finds four matches: the strings ‘finxter ‘, ‘for ‘, ‘fast ‘, and ‘fun ‘.

Asterisk + Character Class Example

The third example is the following:

>>> re.findall('f[a-z]*', text)

['finxter', 'for', 'fast', 'fun']

This regex achieves almost the same thing: finding all words starting with f. But you use the asterisk quantifier in combination with a character class that defines specifically which characters are valid matches.

Within the character class, you can define character ranges. For example, the character range [a-z] matches one lowercase character in the alphabet while the character range [A-Z] matches one uppercase character in the alphabet.

But note that the empty space is not part of the character class, so it won’t be matched if it appears in the text. Thus, the result is the same list of words that start with character f: ‘finxter ‘, ‘for ‘, ‘fast ‘, and ‘fun ‘.

What If You Want to Match the Asterisk Character Itself?

You know that the asterisk quantifier matches an arbitrary number of the preceding regular expression. But what if you search for the asterisk (or star) character itself? How can you search for it in a string?

The answer is simple: escape the asterisk character in your regular expression using the backslash. In particular, use ‘\*’ instead of ‘*’. Here’s an example:

>>> import re

>>> text = 'Python is ***great***'

>>> re.findall('\*', text)

['*', '*', '*', '*', '*', '*']

>>> re.findall('\**', text)

['', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '***', '', '', '', '', '', '***', '']

>>> re.findall('\*+', text)

['***', '***']

You find all occurrences of the star symbol in the text by using the regex ‘\*’. Consequently, if you use the regex ‘\**’, you search for an arbitrary number of occurrences of the asterisk symbol (including zero occurrences). And if you would like to search for all maximal number of occurrences of subsequent asterisk symbols in a text, you’d use the regex ‘\*+’.

[Collection] What Are The Different Python Re Quantifiers?

The asterisk quantifier—Python re *—is only one of many regex operators. If you want to use (and understand) regular expressions in practice, you’ll need to know all of them by heart!

So let’s dive into the other operators:

A regular expression is a decades-old concept in computer science. Invented in the 1950s by famous mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene, the decades of evolution brought a huge variety of operations. Collecting all operations and writing up a comprehensive list would result in a very thick and unreadable book by itself.

Fortunately, you don’t have to learn all regular expressions before you can start using them in your practical code projects. Next, you’ll get a quick and dirty overview of the most important regex operations and how to use them in Python. In follow-up chapters, you’ll then study them in detail — with many practical applications and code puzzles.

Here are the most important regex quantifiers:

Note that I gave the above operators some more meaningful names (in bold) so that you can immediately grasp the purpose of each regex. For example, the ‘^’ operator is usually denoted as the ‘caret’ operator. Those names are not descriptive so I came up with more kindergarten-like words such as the “start-of-string” operator.

We’ve already seen many examples but let’s dive into even more!

import re text = ''' Ha! let me see her: out, alas! he's cold: Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; Life and these lips have long been separated: Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. ''' print(re.findall('.a!', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of an arbitrary character that is

followed by the character sequence 'a!'.

['Ha!'] ''' print(re.findall('is.*and', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of the word 'is',

followed by an arbitrary number of characters

and the word 'and'.

['is settled, and'] ''' print(re.findall('her:?', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',

followed by zero or one occurrences of the colon ':'.

['her:', 'her', 'her'] ''' print(re.findall('her:+', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',

followed by one or more occurrences of the colon ':'.

['her:'] ''' print(re.findall('^Ha.*', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences where the string starts with

the character sequence 'Ha', followed by an arbitrary

number of characters except for the new-line character. Can you figure out why Python doesn't find any?

[] ''' print(re.findall('n$', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences where the new-line character 'n'

occurs at the end of the string.

['n'] ''' print(re.findall('(Life|Death)', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of either the word 'Life' or the

word 'Death'.

['Life', 'Death'] '''

In these examples, you’ve already seen the special symbol ‘\n’ which denotes the new-line character in Python (and most other languages). There are many special characters, specifically designed for regular expressions. Next, we’ll discover the most important special symbols.

What’s the Difference Between Python Re * and ? Quantifiers?

You can read the Python Re A? quantifier as zero-or-one regex: the preceding regex A is matched either zero times or exactly once. But it’s not matched more often.

Analogously, you can read the Python Re A* operator as the zero-or-more regex (I know it sounds a bit clunky): the preceding regex A is matched an arbitrary number of times.

Here’s an example that shows the difference:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('ab?', 'abbbbbbb')

['ab']

>>> re.findall('ab*', 'abbbbbbb')

['abbbbbbb']

The regex ‘ab?’ matches the character ‘a’ in the string, followed by character ‘b’ if it exists (which it does in the code).

The regex ‘ab*’ matches the character ‘a’ in the string, followed by as many characters ‘b’ as possible.

What’s the Difference Between Python Re * and + Quantifiers?

You can read the Python Re A* quantifier as zero-or-more regex: the preceding regex A is matched an arbitrary number of times.

Analogously, you can read the Python Re A+ operator as the at-least-once regex: the preceding regex A is matched an arbitrary number of times too—but at least once.

Here’s an example that shows the difference:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('ab*', 'aaaaaaaa')

['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a']

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaaaa')

[]

The regex ‘ab*’ matches the character ‘a’ in the string, followed by an arbitary number of occurrences of character ‘b’. The substring ‘a’ perfectly matches this formulation. Therefore, you find that the regex matches eight times in the string.

The regex ‘ab+’ matches the character ‘a’, followed by as many characters ‘b’ as possible—but at least one. However, the character ‘b’ does not exist so there’s no match.

What are Python Re *?, +?, ?? Quantifiers?

You’ve learned about the three quantifiers:

• The quantifier A* matches an arbitrary number of patterns A.
• The quantifier A+ matches at least one pattern A.
• The quantifier A? matches zero-or-one pattern A.

Those three are all greedy: they match as many occurrences of the pattern as possible. Here’s an example that shows their greediness:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('a*', 'aaaaaaa')

['aaaaaaa', '']

>>> re.findall('a+', 'aaaaaaa')

['aaaaaaa']

>>> re.findall('a?', 'aaaaaaa')

['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', '']

The code shows that all three quantifiers *, +, and ? match as many ‘a’ characters as possible.

So, the logical question is: how to match as few as possible? We call this non-greedy matching. You can append the question mark after the respective quantifiers to tell the regex engine that you intend to match as few patterns as possible: *?, +?, and ??.

Here’s the same example but with the non-greedy quantifiers:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('a*?', 'aaaaaaa')

['', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '']

>>> re.findall('a+?', 'aaaaaaa')

['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a']

>>> re.findall('a??', 'aaaaaaa')

['', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '']

In this case, the code shows that all three quantifiers *?, +?, and ?? match as few ‘a’ characters as possible.

Related Re Methods

There are five important regular expression methods which you should master:

• The re.findall(pattern, string) method returns a list of string matches. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.search(pattern, string) method returns a match object of the first match. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.match(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches at the beginning of the string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.fullmatch(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches the whole string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.compile(pattern) method prepares the regular expression pattern—and returns a regex object which you can use multiple times in your code. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.split(pattern, string) method returns a list of strings by matching all occurrences of the pattern in the string and dividing the string along those. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.sub(The re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0) method returns a new string where all occurrences of the pattern in the old string are replaced by repl. Read more in our blog tutorial.

These seven methods are 80% of what you need to know to get started with Python’s regular expression functionality.

Where to Go From Here?

You’ve learned everything you need to know about the asterisk quantifier * in this regex tutorial.

Summary: When applied to regular expression A, Python’s A* quantifier matches zero or more occurrences of A. The * quantifier is called asterisk operator and it always applies only to the preceding regular expression. For example, the regular expression ‘yes*’ matches strings ‘ye’, ‘yes’, and ‘yesssssss’. But it does not match the empty string because the asterisk quantifier * does not apply to the whole regex ‘yes’ but only to the preceding regex ‘s’.

Want to earn money while you learn Python? Average Python programmers earn more than $50 per hour. You can certainly become average, can’t you?

Join the free webinar that shows you how to become a thriving coding business owner online!

[Webinar] Become a Six-Figure Freelance Developer with Python

Join us. It’s fun!