ok so what threw me was
on *:input:*: if ($regex($1,/^\*/)) { echo -a You typed a * }
$regex returns the total matches so the if statement will be false if it doesn't find any since 0 is false.
in this case the coding of the regex didnt specify any/all matches, so it checked only the first character in the string (which in this case because only $1 too, not $1-), while $regex() would return any/all matches if it was coded a bit different.... right?
