Python Regular Expression Examples: Escaped s ('\s')

>>> import re
>>> english = '"Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." -- William of Ockham (1285-1349)'
>>> print re.findall(r'.*\s', english)
['"Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." -- William of Ockham ']
>>> print re.findall(r'.*?\s', english)
['"Never ', 'increase, ', 'beyond ', 'what ', 'is ', 'necessary, ', 'the ', 'number ', 'of ', 'entities ', 'required ', 'to ', 'explain ', 'anything." ', '-- ', 'William ', 'of ', 'Ockham ']