| Subject: | Documentation should be clearer that Multiline_Matching has no effect on qr// |
The $Expect::Multiline_Matching turns on and off Expect's multi-line
matching mode. But this only has an effect if you pass in a string, and
then use '-re' mode. If you pass in a regular expression value (via
qr//), then the qr//'s own flags are preserved irrespective of what it
gets interpolated into. There was a bug in Perl 5.8 where interpolating
a regex without /m into a match with /m would incorrectly apply the /m
to the inner regex too, but this was fixed in Perl 5.10. The correct
behavior, as seen in Perl 5.10, is that if you pass in a regex (via
qr//), then $Expect::Multiline_Matching has no effect. The documentation
should say that if you pass in a regex, then you must use the qr's flags
to control whether it is multiline (which by default it is not, opposite
of the default behavior of Expect).