>=20 > So "A*" means, match 0 or more times, and "ab" matches 0 times so, it is a > match. Something seems wrong with this analysis. "A*" matches zero or more occurrences of "A". This means it matches the following strings: "" (null string), "A", "AA", "AAA", etc. The string "ab" does not match anything in that sequence, therefore it should not match. -Chris