Anchors are used to tell the regular expression where to start and end the evaluation of a string. The most common anchors evaluate the characters at the beginning or the end of a string. This allows you to validate that the string starts and/or ends with a digit, symbol, or letter character. The most common anchors are:
^and\A: The^and\Aanchor characters indicates matching at the start of a string for evaluation. If you want to ensure that a certain pattern is matched at the beginning, you will use^or\A. The\Asyntax is symbolic of the first character in the alphabet which isa. This is why regular expressions use this character to designate the evaluation from the start of a string.$and\Z: The$and\Zanchor characters indicate matching at the end of a string for evaluation. If you want to ensure that a certain pattern is matched at the end, you will use$or\Z. The\Zsyntax is symbolic of the last character in the alphabet which isz. This is...