title: match first and last character with known number of inbetween letters
body: <p>there is a text file with words.
  so if a word has 5 letters and the first letter is a and the last letter is s i want to match all the words that follow that pattern.</p>
  
  <pre><code>^a.???.s$
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>this doesn't seem to work</p>
  
  <p>( i'm testing in notepad++ )</p>
  
  <p>any ideas what the correct regex would be ?</p>
  
  <p>thanks in advance!</p>