The default mode for ^ and $ make them pretty much useless for highlights (unless you really want something anchored at the beginning/end).
If the regexp flag included m by default (though the above is useless enough that I don't think there's a need to make it an option), you'd be able to do highlights based on the beginning/end of lines.
Two supporting cases: Emacs defaults to this, which makes sense in the context of an editor; regex101.com turns on the m flag by default since it's common to try a pattern against each line.
The default mode for
^
and$
make them pretty much useless for highlights (unless you really want something anchored at the beginning/end).If the regexp flag included
m
by default (though the above is useless enough that I don't think there's a need to make it an option), you'd be able to do highlights based on the beginning/end of lines.