I just noticed this comment in a uBlock Origin issue, in which Raymond Hill said that the extension equates ^ to * within a blocking filter except if the caret is the last character in the URL pattern: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issue ... -118360778
After thinking it through for a while, I came to the conclusion that this is acceptable, that the only reasonable place to put a caret in would be the end of a URL pattern, and ABP might find some efficiency gains by doing what Raymond Hill did; I haven't dug through the code to see whether ABP already does this, however.
equating caret to asterisk in blocking filters except at end
equating caret to asterisk in blocking filters except at end
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.