On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 12:39:02AM +0900, Han Holl wrote:
> On Apr 7, 2005 3:45 PM, David A. Black <dblack / wobblini.net> wrote:
> > I don't think they ever have been, at least not in the treatment of
> > all this line-ending stuff (and maybe a few other things).
> > 
> > David
> Kind of interesting, and mightily adding to the confusion: Pickaxe2
> calls the m option: 'multi-line mode', dot matches newline.
> Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, in the content page of the Mastering book:
> Dot-matches-all match mode (a.k.a., "single-line mode").
> He calls multi-line mode the different interpretation of ^ and $.

He's using the Perl convention. From man perlre:

      /m   Treat string as multiple lines.  That is, change "^" and "$" from
           matching the start or end of the string to matching the start or
           end of any line anywhere within the string.

[Ruby has this mode always enabled; you have to use \A and \z to match just
start and end of string. Perl has these too, but they're rarely used]

      /s   Treat string as single line.  That is, change "." to match any
           character whatsoever, even a newline, which normally it would not
           match.

[That's the same as Ruby's /m modifier, just to make things confusing]

Regards,

Brian.