How does the use of the ^ and $ symbols in regular expressions affect the matching process in PHP?

The ^ symbol in regular expressions is used to match the beginning of a string, while the $ symbol is used to match the end of a string. When used together, ^ and $ ensure that the entire string must match the pattern specified in the regular expression. This can be useful when you want to match a string that exactly fits a certain pattern without any extra characters before or after. 

$string = "hello123";
$pattern = "/^hello\d{3}$/";

if (preg_match($pattern, $string)) {
    echo "String matches pattern";
} else {
    echo "String does not match pattern";
}

Keywords

regular expressions ^ symbol $ symbol matching process PHP

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