regex multiline modifier and windows line endings

In regex, ^ and $ shoudl match start/end of a line when the 'm' /multiline
modifier is set -- however I just spent the better part of the day trying
to figure out why it wasn't working as expected. I used the query
test$
...and the text
test
test
test

Only the last instance of test would match -- that is expected without the
multiline flag. ( http://tinyurl.com/dx86w ) however they should each
match with the multiline flag so long as there's no additional whitespace
after the fact ( http://tinyurl.com/7bap6 ).

Finally, out of ideas, I replaced \r\n with \n on all of my _POST data --
and presto, it worked. So, my question is -- why won't it work on data
with windows line endings? Is there a built in function for changing the
line ending style or something? It seems there should be a more elegant
solution than running a find/replace on all of my user-input just to make
sure the line ending style are liked by PCRE.

Thanks

A.
Received on Tue Feb 7 21:08:26 2006