diff --git a/doc/reference/src/validation.xml b/doc/reference/src/validation.xml
index 61dad4d2..c636b4ea 100644
--- a/doc/reference/src/validation.xml
+++ b/doc/reference/src/validation.xml
@@ -426,16 +426,14 @@
 
       <para>The syntax is</para>
 
-      <programlisting language="myxml">&lt;v:regex id="id" test="valueToEvaluate" when="applicabilityCondition" parent="parentValidator"&gt;
-  &lt;v:property name="Expression" value="regularExpressionToMatch"/&gt;
+      <programlisting language="myxml">&lt;v:regex id="id" test="valueToEvaluate" expression="regularExpressionToMatch" when="applicabilityCondition" parent="parentValidator"&gt;
   &lt;v:property name="Options" value="regexOptions"/&gt;
   actions
 &lt;/v:regex&gt;</programlisting>
 
       <para>An example is shown below</para>
 
-      <programlisting language="myxml">&lt;v:regex test="ReturningFrom.AirportCode"&gt;
-   &lt;v:property name="Expression" value="[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]"/&gt;
+      <programlisting language="myxml">&lt;v:regex test="ReturningFrom.AirportCode" expression="[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]"&gt;
    &lt;v:message id="error.destinationAirport.threeCharacters" providers="destinationAirportErrors, validationSummary"/&gt;
 &lt;/v:regex&gt;</programlisting>
 
@@ -443,10 +441,18 @@
       that need to conform to some predefined format, such as telephone
       numbers, email addresses, URLs, etc.</para>
 
-      <para>One major difference of the regular expression validator compared
-      to other built-in validator types is that you need to set a required
-      <literal>Expression</literal> property to a regular expression to match
-      against.</para>
+      <note>
+        <para>
+          Note that current behavior limits the Regular Expression Validator to expressions
+          to being full matches, i.e., ^(expression)$, thus limiting functionality.
+          To not change this behavior in a point release, a property <literal>AllowPartialMatching</literal> 
+          has been added in 1.3.1 to support the correct behavior.
+        </para>
+        <para>
+          This property will be removed for next major/minor version 2.0 and implementation 
+          will be fixed to get the intented behavior.
+        </para>
+      </note>
     </section>
 
     <section>
diff --git a/src/Spring/Spring.Core/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidator.cs b/src/Spring/Spring.Core/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidator.cs
index 73920392..924d5c76 100644
--- a/src/Spring/Spring.Core/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidator.cs
+++ b/src/Spring/Spring.Core/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidator.cs
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@ namespace Spring.Validation
         #region Fields
 
         private string expression = string.Empty;
+        private bool allowPartialMatching = false;
         private RegexOptions options;
 
         #endregion
@@ -98,6 +99,16 @@ namespace Spring.Validation
             set { expression = value; }
         }
 
+        /// <summary>
+        /// Gets or sets a value indicating whether to do a partial match instead of a full match.  
+        /// Default is false.
+        /// </summary>
+        public bool AllowPartialMatching
+        {
+            get { return allowPartialMatching; }
+            set { allowPartialMatching = value; }
+        }
+
         /// <summary>
         /// The <see cref="RegexOptions"/> for the regular expression evaluation.
         /// </summary>
@@ -143,7 +154,14 @@ namespace Spring.Validation
             }
 
             Match match = Regex.Match(text, this.Expression, this.Options);
-            return match.Success;
+            if (allowPartialMatching)
+            {
+                return match.Success;
+            }
+            else
+            {
+                return match.Success && match.Index == 0 && match.Length == text.Length;
+            }            
         }
     }
 }
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/test/Spring/Spring.Core.Tests/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidatorTests.cs b/test/Spring/Spring.Core.Tests/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidatorTests.cs
index a0eaa20a..d5b2ab90 100644
--- a/test/Spring/Spring.Core.Tests/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidatorTests.cs
+++ b/test/Spring/Spring.Core.Tests/Validation/Validators/RegularExpressionValidatorTests.cs
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ namespace Spring.Validation.Validators
         [Test]
         public void CaseSensitiveStringMatching()
         {
-            RegularExpressionValidator validator = new RegularExpressionValidator("ToString()", "true", @"^[A-Z]([a-z]{1})");
+            RegularExpressionValidator validator = new RegularExpressionValidator("ToString()", "true", @"[A-Z][a-z]*");
             Assert.IsTrue(validator.Validate("Aleksandar", new ValidationErrors()));
             Assert.IsFalse(validator.Validate("ALEKSANDAR", new ValidationErrors()));
             Assert.IsFalse(validator.Validate("aleksandar", new ValidationErrors()));
@@ -119,13 +119,12 @@ namespace Spring.Validation.Validators
         }
 
         [Test]
-        public void Test()
+        public void AllowPartialMatching()
         {
             RegularExpressionValidator validator = new RegularExpressionValidator();
-            validator.Expression = "^[A-Za-z]";
-            Assert.True(validator.Validate("hello", new ValidationErrors()));
-
+            validator.Expression = "[A-Za-z]";
+            validator.AllowPartialMatching = true;
+            Assert.True(validator.Validate("123a456", new ValidationErrors()));
         }
-
 	}
 }
\ No newline at end of file