Why is the start of a line “^” and the end of line “$”?

Question

I never remember whether ^ matches the beginning of the line and $ matches the end of it or the other way around. A good mnemonic would be that the $ sign is always before the price, therefore it matches the beginning of a line - unfortunately it's the other way around.

So is there any reason why these two characters were chosen for the beginning and end of line?

Answer 1

One mnemonic: In an auction, bidders start by raising ^ their paddles. The price $ is established at the end.

Answer 2

I memorize ^ as: It points to where it came from, i.e. the previous line, so it should stand at the beginning.

Answer 3

The $ used to mean the end of the line in very early editors, like ed. The ^ was probably chosen because it was about the last unused character on keyboards at the time :-)

Answer 4

This is probably due to the relative positions of these two characters on a QWERTY keyboard: '^' in first position (start of line) and '$' after (end of line).

EDIT: My bad, this is only valid on a french keyboard (AZERTY). It provides a mnemonic for AZERTY user but not an explanation.

Answer 5

\A and \Z do roughly the same, except they are subtly different to ^/$ with respect to new line characters.

So if you remember that and also remember that ^ looks most similar to A and $ is most simliar to Z that might be enough of a mnemonic.