Please explain the ^ sign to me

Question

hey guys
first of all why some part of the class selector is in brackets
second thing, what is that ^ sign ?
.container [class^=col-]

Answer 1

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14130765/what-is-caret-symbol-used-for-in-css-when-selecting-elements

https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/sel_attr_begin.asp