"SH" == Steve Hix writes:
SH In this case, MT-NewsWatcher defines "." as "any single
SH character", and ".*" means "one or more characters"

If that's true, it's not canonical regular expressions. "*"
(asterisk) should mean "0 to many of the preceding character". "+"
means "1 to many of the preceding character".
--
Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the
church's opposition to every advance in every field of science.
~ Upton Sinclair