What are ^.* and .*$ in regular expressions?

Question

Can someone explain the meaning of these characters. I\'ve looked them up but I don\'t seem to get it.

The whole regular expression is:

/^.*(?=.{8,})(?=.         


        

Answer 1

This matches the beginning of the line (^) followed by any character (.*) :

^.*

This matches the end of the line ($) preceded by any character (.*) :

.*$