https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=65100
--- Comment #1 from Stefan Bodewig <bode...@apache.org> --- Well, Ant isn't really doing anything by itself here, it just uses the Java classlib's regex package. Can you run import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class A { public static void main(String[] args) { final Pattern without = Pattern.compile("(8|9|10|11)"); System.err.println("Without carret matches: " + without.matcher("11").matches()); final Pattern with = Pattern.compile("^(8|9|10|11)"); System.err.println("With carret matches: " + with.matcher("11").matches()); } } and see what you get as a result? -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.