.* will match anything but a newline, or the empty string.

It will match both of those, actually, as it should. 

506 $ perl -we'print "yes" if "" =~ /.*/'
yes
507 $ perl -we'print "yes" if "\n" =~ /.*/'
yes

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In reply to Re^4: Strange regex to test for newlines: /.*\z/ by mrpeabody
in thread Strange regex to test for newlines: /.*\z/ by betterworld

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