what regexp would match from the beginning of a text to a given value?

i've been trying ^*value, but it just doesn't work.

UPDATE -- shell script magic has solved my problem!

i used this string of commands, for the curious

cat file | tr -d \\n | sed "s/^.*value//" | sed "s/value.*//"

the purpose of this was to grab a specific unknown value from a known position in a text.