Regular Expressions Anchor Characters: Caret (^)
Remarks
Terminology
The Caret (^) character is also referred to by the following terms:
- hat
- control
- uparrow
- chevron
- circumflex accent
Usage
It has two uses in regular expressions:
- To denote the start of the line
- If used immediately after a square bracket (
[^) it acts to negate the set of allowed characters (i.e.[123]means the character 1, 2, or 3 is allowed, whilst the statement[^123]means any character other than 1, 2, or 3 is allowed.
Character Escaping
To express a caret without special meaning, it should be escaped by preceding it with a backslash; i.e. \^.
