How do you match a caret (^) symbol in regex?

Question

I know these won't do it and also why, but how do you match it?

/^/
/(^)/
/[^]/

Answer 1

Escape it with a backslash:

/\^/

This will make it be interpreted as a literal ^ character.

Answer 2

I think this works (I've tested this in java):

\\^

'\' is used as an escape character, so you first escape '^', then you escape '\' itself

you can find more information here: http://www.regular-expressions.info/characters.html