Forum Moderators: phranque
You could leave it off in this case because the previous octet is expressed in three digits, but I do it out of habit to avoid serious problems if the previous octet is only one or two digits.
To show what I mean, take the pattern
^123\.45\.67
That's OK, because "67" must be the whole octet, since "670" is greater than 255 and would be invalid.
But take the pattern:
^54\.32\.1
That will match 54.32.1, but it will also match 54.32.10 or 54.32.101, and all three are valid! :o
Throwing the dot on the end forces it to stop matching after the specified number of digits.
Jim