RE: About "/" in the regexp

[Drew Adams]

>           (setq auto-mode-alist
>             (append
>              ;; File name (within directory) starts with a dot.
>              '(("/\\.[^/]*\\'" . fundamental-mode)
>                ;; File name has no dot.
>                ("/[^\\./]*\\'" . fundamental-mode)
>                 ...)
>              auto-mode-alist))
> 
> I'm confused about the first "/" in the two regular 
> expressions.  Why is there a slash character?  Can anybody 
> help?  Thanks.

It's for a file name "within [a] directory", e.g., /foobar.
The / is the directory separator.