regular expression

Question

I'm not sure about the meaning of this regular expression.

^[^a]*$

Does that mean, we don't want any string started with the letter a or contain a. And we don't want any string ended with also the letter a ?.

thanks.

Answer 1

• ^ asserts position at start of a line
  
• [^a] Match a single character not present in the list
  
• * Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
  
• $ asserts position at the end of a line

So it will essentially match any line and does not contain an a