Regular Expressions: An Introduction
Published: January 12, 2004
User Rating: 8.8 (115 votes)
Page » Positional Matching
Positional matching allows you to match the pattern with the start and end of the subject.
- ^: Match Start of the subject (or start of the line, in multi-line mode)
- $: Match End of the subject (or end of the line, in multi-line mode)
- \A: Match Start of the subject (independent of multi-line mode)
- \z: Match End of the subject (independent of multi-line mode)
Taking a few examples
Regex /.*abcd.*/
Equivalent to /abcd/
Explaintaion Match anything, followed by "abcd", followed by anything
Regex /^abcd.*/
Explaintaion Match starting "abcd", followed by anything
Example abcd True
abcde True
abcdef True
xyzabcd False
xyzabcdef False
Regex /abcd$/
Explaintaion Match ending "abcd"
Example abcd True
abcde False
abcdef False
xyzabcd True
xyzabcdef False
Regex /^abcd$/
Explaintaion Match starting and ending "abcd"
Example abcd True
abcde False
abcdef False
xyzabcd False
xyzabcdef False
