Returning a basic type for each attempt at a regex match. Also memoizing the calls to the re module for speed.

matches.py

import re

def memoize(f):
    class memodict(dict):
        def __init__(self, f):
            self.f = f
        def __call__(self, *args):
            return self[args]
        def __missing__(self, key):
            ret = self[key] = self.f(*key)
            return ret
    return memodict(f)

@memoize
def _re(method, pattern, value, *args):
    return getattr(re, method)(pattern, value, *args)

def first_match(pattern, value, *args):
    try:
        groups = _re('search', pattern, value, *args).groups()[0]
    except:
        return None

def all_matches(pattern, value, *args):
    try:
        return _re('findall', pattern, value, *args)
    except:
        return []

def dict_match(pattern, value, *args):
    try:
        return _re('search', pattern, value, *args).groupdict()
    except:
        return {}

def any_match(pattern, value, *args):
    return (all_matches(pattern, value, *args),
            dict_match(pattern,  value, *args))

print any_match('(?P<myGroup>foo|bar|baz)', 'foo bar baz', re.I)