x <- c("a.b.c.d", "aeb") starts_with <- "a.b" str_detect(x, paste0("^", starts_with)) #> [1] TRUE TRUE str_detect(x, paste0("^\\Q", starts_with, "\\E")) #> [1] TRUE FALSE
str_detect("\nX\n", ".X.") #> [1] FALSE str_detect("\nX\n", regex(".X.", dotall = TRUE)) #> [1] TRUE
