How often do people use \A and \z (match start and end of a string) instead of ^ and $ (match start and end of a line within a string)? This question is prompted by: (1) part of a post in the "What are your ruby rough cuts ?" thread: * Regexp ^ and $ work match more than just start and end of string. For example, /^abc$/ does not match only "abc" but also "rm -rf /*\nabc" Comment: using \A and \z seems to avoid the unwanted(?) matches. Am I missing something? (2) a Regexp used in the Find module if File::ALT_SEPARATOR and file =~ /^(?:[\/\\]|[A-Za-z]:[\/\\]?)$/ then which matches "start of a line" + X + "end of a line", where X is one of / \\ C: C:/ C:\\ Comment: using ^ and $ in Find will match in the (admittedly rather unlikely) situation of a file path string containing "\n/\n", and I'm wondering why ^ and $ are used in this Find module regexp instead of using \A and \z.