A potentially better version would have been:

/^(node[0-9]*)/

... notice underlined character ...

... which would force the string node to be considered only if it was anchored to the left-margin of the string, not anywhere in the string.

It is also sometimes necessary to specify that a regular expression should not be "greedy." Normally, a regex will seek the longest substring that matches the pattern ("greedy") when what you actually want is the shortest one.

In reply to Re: Partial string match -- with a twist. by Anonymous Monk
in thread Partial string match -- with a twist. by smw6181

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