Regarding: "M for 'multiline' matching, ie dont stop at the new line".

Ummm... no. The '/m' modifier only effects the matching of '^' and '$' (when used to match beginning-of-line, end-of-line). It allows these two symbols to match newlines within the string.

The regex m/\(([^)]*)\)/g, will match across new lines. More specifically, the regex m/[^)]/ will match a newline quite happily. if ( "\n" =~ /[^)]/ ) {print "Yes\n"} Yes