Clarification on name assignment

[Boris Marin]

Hello!
I am trying to parse expression consisting of two elements, where an element can be either an alphanumerical block enclosed in {}, or a number. I am having difficulties using the () to assign names to the matches: when accessing the name corresponding to a block, only the initial '{' is collected. The following snippet illustrates the issue:

from pyparsing import *
block = '{' + Word(alphas) + '}'
number = Word(nums)
item = block | number

twoitems = item('one') + item('two')

r = twoitems.parseString('{xx} 2')
r.one, r.two

I would expect r.one to be '{xx}', instead of '{'. What am I missing here?

Thanks,
Boris

[Boris Marin]

Answering my own question, I was able to get the expected result by grouping:

item = Group(block) | Group(number)

best,
Boris