I believe I have what would be called a scope issue, perhaps name space. Not too sure I'm new to python.

I'm trying to make a module that will search through a list using regular expressions. I'm sure there is a better way of doing it but this error that I'm getting is bugging me and I want to understand why.

here's my code:

class relist(list):
 def __init__(self, l):
  list.__init__(self, l)

 def __getitem__(self, rexp):
  r = re.compile(rexp)
  res = filter(r.match, self)
  return res

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import re
    listl = [x+y for x in 'test string' for y in 'another string for testing']
    print(listl)
    test = relist(listl)
    print('----------------------------------')
    print(test['[s.]'])

When I run this code through the command line it works the way I expect it to; however when I run it through python interactive mode I get the error

>>> test['[s.]']
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "relist.py", line 8, in __getitem__
    r = re.compile(rexp)
NameError: global name 're' is not defined

While in the interactive mode I do import re and I am able to use the re functions, but for some reason when I'm trying to execute the module it doesn't work.

Do I need to import re into the scope of the class? I wouldn't think so because doesn't python search through other scopes if it's not found in the current one?

I appreciate your help, and if there is a better way of doing this search I would be interested in knowing. Thanks