Description of problem:

java regex does not handle the Pattern.MULTILINE flag properly.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

1.6.0.0-50.1.8.7


How reproducible:

According to the documentation of the MULTILINE flag the pattern

"^a.*b$"

should match the string

"xy\naxb"

when the MULTILINE flag is set, because ^ should match the start of the second line in this case (i.e. the position after '\n').
Thus the given input obviously matches the specified pattern. 


Steps to Reproduce:
1. The following little test program can be used to reproduce the issue:

import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;

public class RegexTest {
   public static void main(String[] argv) {
      Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("^a.*b$", Pattern.MULTILINE);
      Matcher match = pat.matcher("xy\naxb");
      if (match.matches()) {
         System.out.println("match OK");
         System.exit(0);
      } else {
         System.out.println("match FAILED");
         System.exit(1);
      }
   }
}
~                    
 
  
Actual results:

The expression does not match.


Expected results:

The expression should match.


Additional info: