title: Python Regular Expression
body: <p>I'd like to extract the designator and ops from the string <code>designator: op1 op2</code>, in which there could be 0 or more ops and multiple spaces are allowed. I used the following regular expression in Python</p>
  
  <pre><code>import re
  match = re.match(r"^(\w+):(\s+(\w+))*", "des1: op1   op2")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problems is that only des1 and op2 is found in the matching groups, op1 is not. Does anyone know why?</p>
  
  <pre>
  The groups from above code is
  Group 0: des1: op1 op2
  Group 1: des1
  Group 2:  op2
  Group 3: op2
  </pre>