Capture regexp subexpressions with python. Better than Perl.

python-re-capture.txt

>>> import re
>>> m = re.match( r"-*(a+)-*(b+)-*(c+)", "---aaa---bbb--ccc---")
>>> m[1]
'aaa'
>>> m[3]
'ccc'
>>> m.group(2,3)
('bbb', 'ccc')

See python fileinput for looping over lines of a series of files on stdin.

import fileinput
for line in fileinput.input():
    line = line.rstrip('\r\n')      # Chomp.
    process( line)
    print( line)