Grammatically correct 301 redirect

For an .htaccess 301 redirect from a non-WWW to a WWW, which is "more correct?" Both seem to work just fine and do what I want, but I know each code-symbol does something important, so in the long run, which is better, please?

This one?

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

...or this one?

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Thank you.

 

The the ladder,

^(.*) -- This will match better just incase anything were to be funky.

Cheers,
Jesse

 

jream, what's the pratical difference between (.*) and ^(.*) or how can this be abused?
AFAIK any character (.) repeated zero or more times (*) will always matches a string from the beginning (^) so both should be the same as well as ^(.*)$ or (.*)$

 

@Jream, thank you for your reply.... BUT your reply says ^(.*)
Did you leave off the $ on purpose? I want to make sure I do it correctly. Which is better: ^(.*) or this: ^(.*)$

I'm also curious about mpix's (the previous poster) question.

Anyway, looks like there are 3 choices:
a.) (.*)
b.) ^(.*)
c.) ^(.*)?

 

Well, I'm still not sure what's best. I realize my question was probably answered somewhere in this thread, but there is still some ambiguity appearing to me. I'd appreciate anyone's comments on this.