Escapes any special characters. Matches 0 or More occurrences of the preceding character. Match of the next character must be at the begining of the line. The only way to get used to the regular expression is to use them. Following is a series of examples.
Matches xyz to the end of the line.
Matches any line ending with atime. Matches any line with Only as the only word in the line. Matches barn, born, burn. Matches their,therr, there, theie. Matches any word.