What does the “?:^” regular expression mean?

Question

I am looking at this sub-expression (this is in JavaScript):

(?:^|.....)

I know that ? means \"zero or one times\" when it fol

Answer 1

(?:some stuff) means that you don't want to match the expression in the parentheses separately. Normally the pieces of a regexp grouped in parentheses are grouped and can be referenced individually (this is called using backreferences).

See http://www.regular-expressions.info/brackets.html