title: Positive Lookahead Regex
body: <p>I have the following regex:</p>
  <pre><code>^(?=.{8}$).+
  </code></pre>
  <p>The way I understand this is it will accept 8 of any type of character, followed by 1 or more of any character. I feel I am not grasping how a <em>Positive Lookahead</em> works. Because both sections of the Regex are looking for '.' wouldn't any series of characters fit this?</p>
  <p>My question is, how does the positive lookahead effect this regex and what is an example of a matching string?</p>
  <p>The following did not match when supplied in the following <a href="http://regexlib.com/RETester.aspx" rel="noreferrer">regex tool</a>:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>123456781</li>
  <li>(12345678)1</li>
  <li>(12345678)</li>
  <li>(abcdefgh)a</li>
  <li>(abcdefgh)</li>
  <li>abc</li>
  <li>123</li>
  </ul>
  <p>EDIT: Removed first two data entries as I clearly wasn't using the regex tool correctly as they now match with exactly 8 characters.</p>