Regular expression - starting and ending with a character string

Example: ajshdjashdjashdlasdlhdlSTARTasdasdsdaasdENDaknsdklansdlknaldknaaklsdn

1) START\w*END return: STARTasdasdsdaasdEND - will give you words between START and END

2) START\d*END return: START12121212END - will give you numbers between START and END

3) START\d*_\d*END return: START1212_1212END - will give you numbers between START and END having _

This should do it for you ^wp.*php$

Matches

wp-comments-post.php
wp.something.php
wp.php

Doesn't match

something-wp.php
wp.php.txt

^wp.*\.php$ Should do the trick.

The .* means "any character, repeated 0 or more times". The next . is escaped because it's a special character, and you want a literal period (".php"). Don't forget that if you're typing this in as a literal string in something like C#, Java, etc., you need to escape the backslash because it's a special character in many literal strings.