http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=94148


in reply to Dot star okay, or not?

Try: 
s/^\s*//;
s/\s*$//;

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That is more efficient, because you only match the whitespace, not the whole string. And as to your question, of course dot star is okay, you just have to know when it is okay, that is the tricky part for people just learning regexes.

The 15 year old, freshman programmer,
Stephen Rawls

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom