From: jo@durchholz.org   
      
   John Levine wrote:   
   > [I don't understand it either.  My understanding of typical REs is   
   > that they special case ^ at the beginning of a pattern or chunk   
   > that could match at the beginning, and $ at the end. -John]   
      
   That's just implementation; the OP was after precedences.   
      
   Assigning a precedence to ^ and $ does make sense. For example,   
      
      ^asd|jkl   
      
   could mean "asd at the beginning of the text, or jkl anywhere in the   
   text", or it could mean "asd or jkl at the beginning of the text".   
   PCRE says it's either ^asd or jkl, so it assigns a higher precedence to   
   ^ than to |.   
      
   Regards,   
   Jo   
      
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