[denzquix]

> In Lua it's only the start/end of the string

There's an additional caveat: if you use the optional "init" parameter to specify an offset into the string to start matching, the ^ anchor will match at that offset, which may or may not be what you expect.

[vitiral]

That is a good point, and something I've actually (personally) used quite a bit when writing parsers

[Dylan16807]

> which may or may not be what you expect

I find it hard to imagine any other expectation passing the rubber duck test.

"Oh, so you expected the match to always fail, no matter what the string was?"

[denzquix]

Well, it's not a completely outlandish scenario that the value of `init` might come from a variable that is sometimes at the start of the string and sometimes not, and a newcomer might expect `^` to only match when it is.

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly far more useful as it is, I'm glad it works this way.