It does no good to have an unanchored .* at both ends. but it does because regexps are greedy (by default). If they weren't there, the substitution would do nothing, it would just put $1 back where it found it. But the .* cause the whole line to be matched, and thus *only* the $1 is put back in. that said it is no doubt safer to anchor such a regex

In reply to RE: Re: Strange Behavior while Parsing Sendmail logs by Anonymous Monk
in thread Strange Behavior while Parsing Sendmail logs by Russ

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