1. I don't have to remember which implicitly anchors to the start of the string and which doesn't. 2. I prefer the explicitness of '^' (maybe that's just anothe

1. I don't have to remember which implicitly anchors to the start of the string and which doesn't. 2. I prefer the explicitness of '^' (maybe that's just another way of stating (1). 3. I can use re.M to modify '^' to match at the start of each line on multiline strings, whereas match will still keep searching from the front. 4. The asymmetry of anchoring the front but not the end is weird. Python now has fullmatch, but ugh, just use the pattern for that if you need it. 5. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another language that has a regex function that implicitly anchors the front.