Anchors help us to enforce the beginning or ending of a string or line and make sure that the expression will only match if everything is covered, instead of just parts of the string to test.

begin/starts with

begin with / starts with

Forcing the string to start is probably most of the time a great idea. For example, try matching an email address. You certainly don't want to match @[email protected] just because a part of it is correct.

But try for yourself. Remove the starts with anchor and play around.

Note: begin with is a synonym and behaves just like starts with.

starts with literally "match"

must end

must end

Just like the above, you often want to force the string to end. must end will stop matching if the string does not end after the given match.

literally "match" must end