Martin Elzen wrote:
> It certainly does help, now I finally understand what went wrong.  Thank 
> you very much for your help Simon, and also for showing me how to check 
> things out with irb.  (And also, everyone else who answered my question: 
> thank you very much.)

Just want to add that \A is not 100% equivalent to ^ anyway.

  irb(main):001:0> "012\n123" =~ /^123/
  => 4
  irb(main):002:0> "012\n123" =~ /\A123/
  => nil

-- 
dave